Tech and the Baby Boomer

Technology’s Relentless March! One Baby Boomer’s Lament

2011-12-11T16:27:00.000-05:00

I know I’ve been neglecting this Tech and the Baby Boomer blog, and I apologize to all my readers. I am in the middle of a project that is taking all of my time: a web news site called New Jersey Tech Weekly. This is an interesting journey for me into the world of entrepreneurship. However, there is nothing like trying something new, to show you that you have a lot to learn.

This is the truth: as a baby boomer, I am frequently stymied by the technology I must use to do my new job well. While I’ve mastered much of what I wrote about earlier, I’ll admit I am having trouble keeping up with new developments. The more I need to use new technology, the less time I have to learn it.

So here is my Boomer wish list for the coming year:

Facebook, Twitter, and Google: Stop changing things so fast. Give us casual users a chance to catch up to the last change before you make more changes to your products. I’m not even saying this is something these companies should do just for baby boomers. I think the rate of change baffles even younger users, if they are casual ones.

Facebook seems to change something every week. In the past, it made no difference to me, but now I don’t have time to go back to update my privacy settings each time Facebook makes a change. When I go to Facebook, I really just want to find out what my friends are doing, comment and get out. Also, now I have two Facebook pages, one for myself and one for New Jersey Tech Weekly. Updating everything is overwhelming, and even more so when I have to learn something new about the service each time I go on it.

This brings me to Google. Google is changing Gmail’s interface shortly. I had an opportunity to try out the new interface and I hate what they’ve done. All the new colors are hard on my eyes. It takes forever for the “pull down” menus to open on my screen. Those menu items used to be right there for me to click on. I just learned how to use “labels,” became comfortable with what they could do for me, and now I have to hunt for them!

Then, of course, Google introduced Google+ this year. Some of the cutting edge companies I cover are on Google+ so I have to learn how to use it. I went to a great session taught by a social media guru (Eva Abreu) and got some good pointers. (This is her webpage in case you want to use her services.) I put up a personal page and a business page.

I even learned how to initiate or join a “hangout.” I do think this is an amazing feature. It lets 10 people with video cameras on their computers interact. You could have a study group this way. Or interact with all the members of your far flung family at the same time. Yet Google keeps on tweaking the features for this service and many of its others. And frankly, I can’t keep up.

The last straw was Twitter’s new redesign. I use Twitter to broadcast news about my areas of expertise. My "handle" for this is @techandboomers and @njtechwkly. For the most part I've found it very, very easy to use. I “tweet” links to interesting articles in these fields and I send direct messages to companies I cover for New Jersey Tech Weekly. Now Twitter changed. It’s hard to find the direct message feature, for example. I’m not sure why Twitter is changing either. Much of the change that goes on seems like change for change sake!

My Second Wish has to do with apps. I’ll address this complaint to developers: stop making apps that are hard to use! I mean, test them on regular people before you release them. If you make a new version of an app, give people a way to delete the old version easily. Don’t make them figure it out. I say this with the utmost respect. I love app developers. I love anyone who is takes a problem and solves it. I love my iPhone and my iPad, and generally I’m happy with them. But occasionally, I become frustrated.

I had downloaded Cardmuncher to solve a business card issue I was having. Who has time to enter all their business card info into a computer? Cardmuncher lets you take a picture of a business card someone gives you, and snap, the information is processed and brought back into your computer. It links to LinkedIn, so you can “connect” with the person who handed you the card on that social networking site. It was great.

Cardmuncher announced a new version. Did it update the version I already had on my iPhone? No, it just downloaded a new one. True, all my information was on it, but the old version’s icon was still there on my screen. I know how to delete the old version. You just hold it down until an "X" appears on it and I did that, but that is something the app developer should have taken care of. Also, the new version is different from the old one. Now it seems that you can only take a picture of a card vertically, not horizontally as before. It’s harder to focus the cards in that little window. Yet I’m still using the app, just not as happily.

Well that’s enough ranting for one day. I wish everyone out there a happy holiday season!

From one Boomer to Steve Jobs: You Changed Our Lives

2011-10-07T08:55:00.001-04:00

Dear Steve Jobs,

We all know you were one of us, a Baby Boomer. Of course, you were a bit different from the beginning. You thought different. Well, even though your ad campaign said
“Think Different” I’ve always been partial to “Think Differently.” Either way, as one Baby Boomer to another I want to thank you for giving us the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. Each in its own way has changed the lives of many Baby Boomers.

Here are some examples. The iPod changed my travel life. Before the iPod, whenever my husband and I would travel, we would take along an extra bag for all of his CDs and his CD player. He never had enough jazz with him. When the iPod came along, he was reluctant to try it. He said he would never be able to get the quality of his CDs on this device. Some time went by and we were planning a particularly long trip, so he figured out how to transfer his music to the iPod using Apple Lossless audio compression. It was just what he needed. He hasn’t used a CD player since, except perhaps to upload to his computer. When we go on vacation, no more do we have to take a suitcase for the CDs.

You gave us the iTunes store and that changed how I bought music. You don’t hear much about this store as an invention, but it was an invention none the less. Not only could I now download individual songs and “albums” to my computers and transfer them to my iPod, I could research music easily here. While the music industry said you ruined their business by letting people sample and buy piecemeal, consumers loved it. A lot of people were angry about your proprietary format, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that this was an amazing invention. The iTunes store today includes much more than music. People buy TV episodes and movies there. They can buy a documentary to take with them on the go. Steve, for better or for worse, you revolutionized the way people buy music and other media, and we Boomers were the beneficiaries.

I also remember when I had a phone that was just a phone. It couldn’t help me find my way around, or help me look up something on Google. Nor could it record important meetings or take impromptu color pictures. I remember when it was a struggle to text, so much so that I didn’t do it and I wondered why all the “kids” were texting so much. Now I have an iPhone, and for better or for worse, I am never without my email or a book to read. Now I send text messages often, and I text to other Boomers, not just my kids.

Everyone who reads Tech and the Baby Boomer knows how excited I was about the iPhone when I got my first one. Travel apps took me to destinations I could only imagine. Brain games kept me sharp. It really was the first phone that was easy enough for the technologically challenged to use, and so it was an good choice for the Baby Boomer generation, especially when we had some disposable income to spare.

And then, the iPad came along. You said it was magical and you were not far from the truth. How many devices out there can let you see a slide show of your entire photo library and also let you program your digital recorder? How many devices let you read a book, draw a picture and open your locked car? On how many devices can you play board games with others and watch a movie?

I know I sound like a commercial but the iPad was an amazing invention and I know many Baby Boomers who use it every single day. Steve, I know that you had this idea about tablets well before anyone else. I remember the Newton way back in 1993, your failed tablet computer. The Newton was an idea before its time. The iPad was an excellent execution of an idea whose time had come.

I know that there are many Baby Boomers who swear by their Apple computers, whether it was a MAC or today’s more advanced models. I was a PC user myself. However, I understand. When Microsoft was always breaking down, Apple’s operating systems were sturdy and rarely needed repair. Graphics artists loved them. Schools loved them. An Apple computer was probably the first computing device many children ever used, and most of them used them in their schools.

So I end my posthumous letter to you. You were a Baby Boomer who changed the world. You were a a computer genius, but you were cool. You were one of us and your products transformed us. Thank you.

Esther Surden

Tech Suggestions for Hurricane Irene

2011-08-26T12:45:00.000-04:00

As Hurricane Irene hones in on the Eastern Seaboard, rather than bringing in my patio furniture, I began to think about my devices and how I would get emergency help in case electricity went out. Gone are the days of the battery run transistor radio that I would stow under my pillow at night to lull me off to sleep and was my emergency tether in times of trouble. Now, I get most of my news via a cable connection.

My iPhone has a long life battery for a cellphone, but that will give out after a few hours of no electricity. My iPad’s battery lasts 10 hours, and that should be long enough to last through a minor outage, but not a prolonged one. My husband's Kindle has the best battery life, so he should be set for book reading for a while.

If cable goes out, I’m sunk because my Internet (but not my iPhone mobile Internet) is tied to the cable company. Even my home phone system, except for one old-fashioned dialup line, runs over the cable network. Making preparations to live without electricity for a couple of days is daunting. Here are some steps that you and I can take so our entire communications network won’t be disrupted.

Charge everything. I am charging my cellphone, iPad, laptop and anything else I can think of so that they will be ready for a power outage.
Consider buying backup batteries and emergency chargers. You can get backup batteries for most cell phones and “emergency chargers” for the iPhone and the iPad. I’m not endorsing any brands here, but I found a number of them listed on Amazon.com. Since time is of the essence, I think you’d be better off going to your local RadioShack.
Download a free local news radio app for your smartphone. I downloaded an app from my local CBS affiliate that lets me listen to the radio over my cell phone. The best way to do this is to go to the web address of the local radio station you want to follow during this crisis, and find their app. This may be the only time I’ll want to do this, but if the power goes out and I want to know what is going on, I’ll be able to listen to the local radio.
Turn off data roaming to conserve power. If you find that you are draining your smartphone’s battery, turn off data searching. The phone won’t be wasting its power trying to get a signal it can’t get because your wireless network is down, but it will still be available to receive phone calls from loved ones.
If you run out of battery power on your cell and simply have to have your cellphone, consider using your car’s battery as a charger. Make sure you drive the car outside of your garage before you turn the vehicle on to charge the battery, to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning.
The government says we should all have a battery operated radio with the NOAA weather channel. I’m going to stop by my local RadioShack to see if they have any left. And, of course, buy regular batteries. You’ll need them for the radio and for your flashlights. (Of course the iPhone and iPad have a Flashlight app you can download for free from the App Store.)
Consider signing up for Twitter and “following” the state and local government authorities, NOAH, and your local newspaper. Twitter can be the fastest way to find out news during an emergency and can keep you informed if the cable or TV networks go out.
Texting. During some emergencies, the cell phone voice lines are clogged but since texting uses a different channel, texts can get out. If you don’t know how to text on your phone, consider figuring it out before the next emergency strikes.
The government suggests that you designate someone out of the danger area to be your “go to” phone call if you become separated from your family for some reason. So if your son John gets taken to a shelter or daughter Mary can’t get home but is fine, you can call the out of state person and learn that Mary and John are OK.
Also, if you use ATM machines to get money from your bank account, remember that they are computers and may be down as well. Go early and withdraw some money. It can't hurt.

Please feel free to comment on any of these suggestions and provide your own suggestions on using your technology during an emergency. Times have changed and so has the way we get information. I hope all you East Coasters stay safe during this hurricane and I hope this information has been helpful for others who may face emergencies.

Boomers, Should You Use Gadgets to Spy on Loved Ones?

2011-07-30T12:42:00.001-04:00

Recently, here in my home state of New Jersey, an appeals court ruled that it was just fine for a woman to put a GPS tracking device in the couple’s jointly owned car to spy on her spouse. A N.J. court also ruled that police can use cell phone signals to track suspects without having to get a warrant.

Both cases, in my mind, are two sides of the same coin. Most of the mobile gadgets we use today have the ability to pinpoint their locations. In addition, you can buy lots of cameras and gadgets that do the same thing, like monitor car use for teens, for example. The question is: should you take advantage of these capabilities and use them to spy on your significant others or your children?

The idea for this blog post came in part from a newsletter article by my colleague, J.Gerry Purdy of MobileTrax, who discussed his negative reaction to an ad from Brick House Security “offering a number of different hardware and software products clearly designed and being sold to people who want to spy on their spouse, kids or significant others.” Gerry doesn’t recommend spying in the least. He calls it “intent to gather information without the other person’s consent,” and an invasion of privacy.

He says that if your relationship is “tenuous or, even worse, on the rocks, I recommend you talk about it rather than resort to using spyware. It basically gets down to building your own self-esteem and trusting in your relationship, so that you don’t worry about with whom your spouse is communicating or meeting.”

I have to agree, although I think there are exceptions to this rule. Would you read your kid’s diary or journal? I never did, if they even had a diary. I was adamant about letting them keep private things private. Yet, if I had suspected drug use or other harmful, illegal or life threatening activity, I probably would have violated my own rule. They knew that I would not spy and that I expected responsibility on their part in return. Of course, I did look at any papers that were left open for all to see on computers. I wasn't a saint.

Yet, in this day and age, I don’t fault parents who put tracking and limiting software on their children’s computers as many police and school officials suggest. I have a friend who monitors her daughter’s computer use closely, and I understand that she is afraid of the predators out there and not sure about her daughter’s judgments.

However, my friend’s daughter knows that her computer is being watched. She’s been informed that her mom will read her text messages too. She is not being spied on per se, because she knows she is being monitored. Yet I worry if monitoring too closely will create a person who cannot make significant judgments about right and wrong. Like the high school kid who has never taken a sip of wine and then goes to college, only to over indulge in alcohol, will kids who are sheltered from the dangers of the internet be able to cope when restrictions are taken away?

As to police reading texts and emails, I have mixed feelings. I’ve always wondered why electronic communications like email, texting and wireless phone calls are not subject to the same stringent protection of privacy requirements as are land lines and “snail mail,” but they are not. It’s a Federal offense for someone to open your postal mail. It’s not for someone to open your email. (I've been called to task here. Apparently, under some circumstances it CAN be a federal offense! Lawyers out there, please correct me.) If illegal activity is transacted via postal mail, the police would need a warrant to open it. In the case of a civil case, they would need a subpoena. Both of these are difficult to obtain, protecting people against misuse. Yet with email, the police can start and build investigations with fewer hurdles.

This distinction makes it easier for police to track illegal activity being carried out by texting and over cell phones. And it makes it easy for court cases to hinge on emails that were sent. All of that seems like an invasion of privacy to me, whatever the legal reasoning behind it.

My colleague Gerry Purdy says that using spyware destroys trust in relationships. “On some level everyone has experienced the destruction of trust in a relationship. I can tell you from experience that it’s better to have an open and trusting relationship than to destroy trust with gadgets.”

Along with Gerry, I urge you to “Use mobile technologies to build relationships not destroy them.”

My thanks to Gerry Purdy for his inspiration for this post.

How to Opt out of Personalization on Google

2011-07-10T16:42:00.000-04:00

I'm writing this blog post as a result of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a cousin who felt that some of the personalized ads that were following her on Google were downright creepy. Google calls this "Interest-based advertising." In truth, I've found it a little disconcerting too. I once looked up a certain kind of shoe and then later, when I wasn't thinking about shoes, received an ad for a local shoe store. It felt a little weird, like someone saying to me, "Hey Esther, I know you wanted shoes yesterday so I found some for you today."

Anyway, I promised my cousin that I would figure out how she could "opt out" of interest-based ads, and then let her know. What I didn't realize was that it would be difficult to fulfill this promise. Thank you to my daughter for helping me locate the right pages to point to for this blog post.

The best way to get to this function is to search for "Google Ad Preferences" on Google. Click on the exact match to that phrase and you'll go to this page. Here is a screenshot of the page:

As you can see, this page shows you what categories of interests Google has associated with you. It also allows you remove certain categories of ads to be delivered (or "served" as it is called in the industry). For example if one of the categories of ads Google has chosen for you is banking, and you don't want any banking ads, you can ask to be removed from getting them by clicking the "Remove" button.

You can also press the "Opt Out" button, and be removed from all personalized ads provided by Google. You have to realize that Google doesn't want you to press that button, but it is your right to do it. Google believes that by personalizing the ads to your demographic profile, it is "serving" you ads you'll like better than random ads. Here is the screen that you'll see when you've successfully opted out of these ads. Doubleclick is the name of the company Google bought that brings you this technology, and is now Google's personalized ad division.

On the page above, Google warns you that you have to "Opt Out" on each browser that you use. So if you use more than one browser likelike Internet Explorer, FireFox, or Safari or if you use more than one computer, you will have to "Opt Out" on each browser on each computer. Google tells you how to "Opt In" again. And Google explains that you may not be permanently "Opted Out." To permanently "Opt Out," you have to download some software from Google at this page:

In addition to taking action to restrict personalized ads from Google, you can head to the webpage for an organization that lets you opt out of personalized ads from a number of advertising networks and companies. The Network Advertising Initiative doesn't let you opt out of ALL internet advertising; it simply lets you opt out from seeing advertising that is tailored to your web preference and usage patterns.

Here is a screenshot of the Network Advertising Initiative page. A tool on this page looks at the browser you are using and detects if you have a "cookie" from each of the initiative's members. It tells you, and you can choose to "Opt Out" individually, or by choosing "Select All," "Opt Out" of them all.

My cousin didn't mention it, but maybe she was annoyed by the personalized ads in her G-Mail account as well. I'm told that there is no way to completely opt out of personalized ads here, but to opt out of those that are formed by using the collective information in your emails, you need to take a different route. First locate the little star next to your name in the upper right hand corner of your G-Mail Account.

Now click on "Mail settings" and make sure you are on the "General" page. Scroll down the page until you get to this:

If you want to "Opt Out" of these personalized ads, simply click "Don't use these signals to show ads." Even after you do this, you may still get personalized email messages based on the email you are reading. Google thinks that the ads could be of interest to you and on the Learn More page, will try to convince you to allow it to use signals to predict the kinds of ads you'd like to see. The company says: " if you’ve recently received a lot of messages about photography or cameras, a deal from a local camera store might be interesting. On the other hand if you’ve reported these messages as spam, you probably don’t want to see that deal."

Of course, Google thinks that all rational people will take the time to report all spam. In fact, many of us just ignore it. When I get an email from a company I know is legitimate, but the offer isn't of interest to me at this time, I don't report it as spam. I might want to see other offers from that company. Yet I'd be annoyed to see an ad in my email for something similar to the offer I'd ignored, simply because I didn't report it as spam.

Personalized or interest-based ads may be something you are happy about receiving. However, for those of us like my cousin, I hope this information gives you a way to make your web surfing and email experiences more pleasant.

Kinder and Gentler Gadget Use

2011-06-21T10:22:00.000-04:00

I recently came across a column by Lewis D. Diuguid in the Kansas City Star entitled "Gadgets too often stop us from enjoying life." Mr. Diuguid recounted many moments in which he found tech intrusive: a man distracted from being in the moment with his wife in the movie theater, checking emails on a smartphone; parents talking on the phone in the car, ignoring their children; board meetings where devices left open on the table make annoying noises announcing the arrival of new messages.

Writing about these constant interruptions and distractions, Mr. Diuguid asks that we "put them (devices) to the best possible use for ourselves, our families and this community." In other words, he wants us to stop and think before we take out a smartphone or other device when we are in a social setting.

So where do I stand on this issue? I love technology but Mr. Diuguid isn't wrong here, especially as he gently admonishes us to interact with each other in person as much as we can. I've run into these situations myself. Out with a group of friends I rarely see, a couple spent time distracted from conversation, checking for texts from their grandchildren. Out to dinner, one couple I know constantly takes calls from their children. On the beach, someone is always conducting business in a loud voice when others want to relax.

I recently had a conversation with a friend whose sister uses a DVD player and headphones to keep her child quiet during a restaurant meal. I remember and understand: children are a challenge in a restaurant. My own kids were quite high maintenance and we brought a bunch of toys and workbooks along to help them cope with what can be a long time sitting for a little one. However, we also talked to them. They remember the science starter questions we brought along with us and how my husband taught them math and reading while waiting for chicken nuggets.

At home, I must say I wasn't above parking the kids in front of Sesame Street and yes, even Power Rangers and Ghostbusters when I was exhausted or was trying to get a bit of writing finished. But that wasn't all I did. I tried to engage my children, and I bet you did too. How are children going to learn how to behave and carry on conversations with adults unless we go through the painful process of helping them learn?

I noticed that digital gadgets were isolating as soon as digital music players became popular and my teenage children had them. Now, when we took car trips, they wouldn't complain as much. However, car time was the time when we really talked. We played car games and interacted, and they got silly and it was fun. Now we had nothing but silence between us.

A friend of mine who still has a teenaged son, says his son doesn't go out to ball games with his friends. Nor does he go over other kids' houses to watch the game on TV. Instead he sits at home and watches alone, sometimes on TV, sometimes on some other device, but interacts with others during the game, texting. Is this isolating behavior? I really don't know. Something is changing in the way we interact with others.

And in some ways this change is very, very good. I've written before about how the iPad can help the isolated elderly and disabled keep in touch with others. It certainly helps me. I don't like to "sit on the phone" but I'll write a quick email to let someone know I've been thinking about them or I'll update my Facebook status to reach out to my extended network of friends.

Everyone here knows that I am a big proponent of technology. There is nothing I like better than being able to download a book at a moment's notice, use GPS to find where I'm going, or consult Google to figure out an answer to a question I have.

However, as Mr. Diuguid reminds us, "gadgets come and go...What counts, what must endure are relationships we forge with one another."

Posting Pictures and Albums to Facebook and Picasa

2011-06-14T20:34:00.000-04:00

As you know, since I talked about it in my last post, I recently uploaded some pictures of my children's graduations to Facebook.

For my friends who aren't on Facebook, I uploaded the photos to Picasa. Picasa is the Google photo sharing site, and it is free as long as you don't exceed its limits. Google also has Picasa photo editing software you can use that straightens pictures or sharpens them easily. I find it much simpler to use than Photoshop, although it doesn't offer the tools serious photographers need.

Right now Picasa gives everyone more than a gigabyte of storage. You'd think that would be enough, right? I'm about half way to reaching that mark right now. Buying more storage is cheap, however. Google will charge you $5/year for 20GB.

As it turns out, it's very easy to post pictures and albums to sites like Facebook and Picasa, and to keep them private. Also, don't worry that you are going to lose your pictures should these online sites ever go out of business. You'll still have the photos on your computer. That is, if you've mastered the art of moving pictures from your devices to your hard drive.

Some of you Boomers reading this will laugh at this last line and others will recognize yourself in this. I don't know how many of my friends are waiting for someone tech savvy to "take" their pictures from their cameras and put them on their hard drives. This is easy folks, as long as you remember which cord came with your camera!

Usually all you have to do is attach one end of the cord to the camera and the other end to the USB port on your computer. I know, the place to attach the cord on the camera may be hidden in a compartment. You may have to ask someone the first time you try to find it. Or look at the book that came with your camera. Then just find an empty USB port on your laptop or desktop, and plug the cord in. You might have to turn your camera on to get the process rolling.

Depending on what software you have on your computer, the next steps could be simple or hard. In the best of all worlds, the computer will automatically upload the photos onto your system's hard drive. You'll see them zip by on the screen and into your system. Otherwise you may be prompted to start the uploading process. You also may be asked which one, of a number of programs, you want to handle the transfer. Nothing you click here is wrong. Usually, I let Microsoft handle the transfer process.

You might also be asked where on the disk you'd like to place the pictures. Some people designate a photo sub-folder in their Documents folder on their hard drive and others might prefer to have the photos delivered to a folder on their desktop.

Here's where some people get stuck: The system sometimes asks you if you want to erase the camera's data card after you've uploaded the pictures. That is entirely up to you. If you are afraid of losing the pictures, don't click erase. You just might need to buy a lot of storage cards for your camera.

(There are other ways to "get the pictures off of the camera." You can take your camera card to one of those machines in a pharmacy or Target, put the card in the matching slot, and get your pictures that way. That will create print copies of the pictures on the card, although that's not the primary subject of this post.)

After I've transferred the pictures from the camera to the computer, uploading to a site like Picasa couldn't be easier. Go to Picasa and sign up. Then you'll be asked if you want to upload some pictures. It used to be that you could only upload 5 pictures at a time. Now you can upload as many as you want. This is what the uploader looks like:

Notice that you can restrict access to the pictures to "Anyone with a link." That way, only the people to whom you email a link will see your pictures. Since I don't think my pictures should be made public, I choose to restrict access. Choose a title for your album. I usually choose a descriptive title along with the date. Here is the folder that includes one of the pictures I sometimes us as my head shot.

Press "Continue" and you'll be confronted with a dialog box which will instruct you to find the folder on your computer that you want to upload. This is usually the folder that you stored the pictures in earlier. Find it and select "Open" and the process should begin.

The process for uploading photos to Facebook is easy too. At the top of your Facebook page you'll see this box. Click on "Photo" and you'll see these options:

If you choose the Upload a Photo tab from your hard drive you get this window:

Click "Browse" to find the photo you want and then click "Open." You've just added a picture to Facebook. Adding an Album is simple too. Just click on Album and Facebook provides this hint:

As Facebook says, you can select multiple photos from your computer by holding down the Control key. Or you can use their "Simple Uploader" which asks you to name the album first. Notice that I only share my albums with my friends.

I named my album : Sample. Click Browse and find the photos you want to upload to Facebook. Then click Upload Photos.

And that's about all there is to it. Give it a try yourself, and enjoy sharing photos of your important events with friends and family, without having to send out multiple emails to each.

On the Road --Everyday Gadget Use

2011-05-29T16:38:00.004-04:00

I'm just one Baby Boomer and last week I was on the road up and down the east coast for graduations. In between the two graduations I attended a professional conference. I expect that my life is a lot like yours. Boomers are ever moving, whether visiting children and grandkids or traveling for fun. However, this time I was amazed at how many times I used some gadget or my iPhone to help me out while I traveled and even at the conference. Here are some of the ways I used technology:

GPS -- The GPS navigation in my car was a life saver. When I booked the hotels for this trip I was a little bit late (graduation day hotels are often booked a year ahead of time) and the hotel in Maryland I found was a bit out of the way. My GPS got us to the hotel for graduation and to the graduation ceremony with no problems.
Blackberry navigation -- Once, we found that the GPS that came with the the car wasn't updated with all of the local streets located inside the University of Maryland campus. My daughter brought out her Blackberry and we were able to use that to navigate the campus and find our way to specific buildings.
Hotel Reservations -- First, I made my reservations online, once using a hotel site and once using one of the travel sites like Expedia, Orbitz or Hotels.com. I kept a copy of my hotel reservation on my phone, just in case, so I could check to make sure I was being charged correctly. I admit, I also printed it out.
Finding Restaurants -- In one case we were looking for Gluten-free restaurants in Boston. First we used Google online to find one, simply by keying in the words Gluten free + Boston. Then we used one of the many review sites (I can't remember if it was Urban Spoon, Open Table, or Yelp) to find out what people thought of the place. I made reservations using Open Table.
Taking some pictures -- The battery in my husband's fancy Nikon camera wasn't charged when we went to use it in Maryland, so I took out my iPhone and took some pictures with the phone. They weren't the best pictures I've ever taken, but they were better than not having a record of these important memories. I can't wait for the day when the iPhone has a really good camera in it.
Sending photo messages -- I sent one of those pictures, of my niece and her husband participating in our festivities, directly to my brother-in-law's iPhone through photo messaging. That was cool. I've used photo messaging before, but this was a terrific way to send the picture.
Texting -- The phone reception in each of the graduation venues was terrible, but we all kept in touch by texting. Somehow the texts went through when the phone calls wouldn't.
At the conference -- I used my iPhone to record presentations and take pictures of events. The little record app that came with the iPhone did a great job. I wrote about this record app when I first got my phone.

This was just a short list of all the ways technology helped me enjoy these special days. We were at dinner with relatives when one of my husband's cousins jokingly said to me, "now what will you do? Put your pictures up on Facebook?" He thought he was being funny. Well, that's exactly what I plan to do, as soon as I have them together. And that should give me some fodder for a future post.

Change your Passwords, Boomers

2011-05-10T11:36:00.000-04:00

I recently extolled the virtues of password managers to help us remember all of our many and varied passwords. As I said in that post, I really can't remember every password I've created. Some people even use the same password for everything, taking a risk with their security.

This morning I received a message in my inbox that LastPass, the company I used as an example of an excellent password manager, may have had its master passwords breached. Here is the text of the message. If you took my advice and actually downloaded and used LastPass, then you probably got a message like this too:

Dear LastPass User,

On May 3rd, we discovered suspicious network activity on the LastPass internal network. After investigating, we determined that it was possible that a limited amount of data was accessed. All LastPass accounts were quickly locked down, preventing access from unknown locations. We then announced our findings and course of action on our blog and spoke with the media.

As you know, LastPass does not have access to your master password or your confidential data. To further secure your account, LastPass now requires you to verify your identity when logging in. You will be prompted to validate your email if you try to log in from a new location. This prompt will continue to appear until you change your master password or indicate that you are comfortable with the strength of your master password.

Please visit https://lastpass.com/status for more information.

Thanks,
The LastPass Team

My suggestion to everyone who read my blog and downloaded LastPass: change your master password. It's easy to do. At the top of your web page you'll find the star symbol that represents LastPass.

This is how the LastPass symbol looks on Google:

Click it and this popup will appear:

Log in to the site with your current Master Password. Unfortunately I can't show you this part because it would breach my own security! Once you've logged in, go to Account Settings. A blue window will popup with your current password information. Click on Change Master Password and follow through with the steps given there. You'll be asked to create the password, and repeat it, and provide some memory hints so you can remember it. That's really all there is to it.

This company and the others out there like it provide a valuable service, but even companies that spend lots of money and time creating ways to circumvent hackers can sometimes be vulnerable. LastPass got the word out to the press and to the public fairly fast, as soon as the company confirmed that there were problems.

Am I sorry that I told you about password managers? No, I'm not. I will continue to use them because they save me time and effort at individual sites. The bottom line: you do have to be careful to take reasonable action if you hear that a password manager has been hacked.

An App By Boomers For Boomers: Eye Reader

2011-04-26T12:24:00.000-04:00

At least one small company out there is creating apps that take Baby Boomer needs seriously and maybe the reason is this: the company is being run by a 1972 graduate of Texas Tech. If you do the math, you'll know that the engineer creating these apps, Gerry Lavender, is a Boomer himself. His muse and business partner is his wife, Carol.

In a recent interview, Carol told me that she and her friends came up with the idea for a line of “Silver Apps” that would address Boomer needs and then asked Gerry to implement the ideas. Gerry, who has been a computer consultant and programmer for years, works from his home in San Antonio, Texas and calls his company NetSoft. The first app from Gerry and Carol's collaboration is called EyeReader, an ingenious little program that costs $1.99 in the Apple App Store. Fair warning. The EyeReader app only works on the iPhone 4 right now.

The EyeReader app shines an LED light on a page and the phone's illuminated screen magnifies (up to 5 times) the print you want to read. It's perfect for small print on menus in dark restaurants, medicine bottles, footnotes etc. As one of the founders told another interviewer, “ you might forget your reading glasses, but you always have your phone with you.”

I don't have an iPhone 4, but three members of my family each have one, so I asked to borrow a phone to try out this app in person. I downloaded the app from the app store directly to the phone:

This is NetSoft's picture of this app at work:

And here is a picture my son took of the app looking at a yogurt label: Note that you can't get the whole label in one shot. You have to move the phone around to find the particular items you want to magnify and light up.

And here is another shot of a medicine label:

I tried out the app on a Playbill I received for a play I recently attended. I'm always frustrated when I attempt to read the small print in those things. All you have to do is open the app and aim the phone at the area you want to read. It’s pretty simple, although I have to admit it took me a little practice and patience to make this app work to my satisfaction. However, it was worth the effort. Once I figured out how to maneuver the iPhone and expand the magnification, I was able to clearly read what I wanted to read. The key: you need to take two fingers and spread the image on the phone's face to see maximum magnification.

I found myself wondering why the EyeReader wasn't available for the iPhone 3GS, and Carol explained that until the light was on the same side of the camera as the lens, the app couldn't combine both light and magnification. With the iPhone 4, and its two cameras, you have that combination.

So what does the future hold for the Silver Apps? Right now, Gerry is porting the app to Android phones and a finished product should be available for those users soon. In addition, a magnify only version will be available for the iPhone 3GS.

Also, the duo is cooking up some additional apps designed for our generation. Those of us who have diminished hearing, but don't quite need a hearing aid, probably will like an app NetSoft is creating that combines Bluetooth with the phone to amplify hearing. You'll put a Bluetooth bud in your ear, tap the app on the iPhone and the phone will amplify the sounds in the room for you.

Another upcoming app creates a password protected lock box for all your prescription information. No more showing up at the doctor's office without your list of medications. The list will be on your phone where you can't forget it. I know quite a few younger people that could use something like that too! Another app will make use of the GPS info on your phone to help you find your car in a parking lot.

I can't wait to see what they come up with next. And I'm happy to see Baby Boomers actually inventing the apps aimed at our generation.

iPod Touch Mother's Day Ad Aims at Boomers' Children

2011-04-21T13:52:00.004-04:00

I was blown away by Apple's iPod Touch advertisement for Mother's Day, which seems to me to be aimed at the children of the Boomer mom. I received this ad in an email today. The ad says:

Mom can see you anytime with FaceTime on iPod touch. She can make a FaceTime call to an iPhone 4, iPod touch, iPad 2, and Mac.* She'll also enjoy HD video recording, apps, and more.

Apple, of course, is right. Who would want this item more than a mom with a kid in college or some grandkids in another state? And who are these people Apple is trying to reach? Baby Boomers, of course. The ad does neglect to remind buyers that they'll have to make sure there is Wi-Fi in mom's house or she won't be able to make that FaceTime call. But I digress.

Apple goes one step further and suggests some apps you might want to download for your mom. That way the iPod can be loaded with apps mothers can use from the start. They include "Yoga STRETCH" an app that has custom and preloaded yoga sessions complete with instructions and music; ShopKick for the shopper mom, an app that offers deals and rewards at major retailers; Instagram which will let mom turn her pictures into "works of art"; and then for baker mom: Martha Stewart Makes Cookies. The ad also suggests Books, so mom can read on her iPod Touch.

While Apple seems to be addressing the Boomer audience with this ad, the way the company is doing it seems a bit condescending to me. This app is aimed at young people or young adults and wants them to give this device as a gift to their mothers. To my knowledge, Apple has never addressed the Baby Boomer woman directly with an ad that says here is the iPod Touch and this is why you might like it. Boomer women have buying power too! I'm sure this is just one opinion about this ad; you may have your own.

I haven't written much about the iPod Touch in this column, basically because I don't own one. I opted for the iPhone which includes a phone as well as all of the iPod Touch functions. Now my iPhone is becoming outdated and I find that some of the apps I want aren't available for it. In particular one app I’ll be reviewing next doesn’t work on the 3GS. I had to borrow a phone from a family member to see how it works! And I asked my son to take pictures of the app on his iPhone 4. I'll upgrade when the new iPhone 5 comes out, which is now rumored to be in September. However, for many of you, an iPod Touch would be a less expensive alternative to an iPhone, while still giving you access to all the newer apps you can enjoy.

I know that when I have a computer problem, I turn to a younger member of my family to help me out. Computers, especially PCs, are still complicated beasts that sometimes need an expert's attention. Perhaps we Boomers are more used to being introduced to technology by young people. Yet Apple has made a product that is so simple and intuitive to use that most people can pick it up and use it without needing an instruction manual...even Baby Boomers. After all, Steve Jobs is a Baby Boomer. I think this company can try talking directly to us, before they talk to our children.

Why I'm on Facebook, Revisited

2011-04-05T13:45:00.000-04:00

With all of the privacy issues that Facebook presents, you may wonder "why bother?" Most Baby Boomers I know do very well with email. They email their pictures and their grandkids' pictures to their brothers and sisters. Maybe they remember that Aunt Sadie might like to see them too and that she has an email address. Most people I know these days don't get around to printing out their pictures and putting them in an envelope to mail, so anyone who isn't "on the computer" is left out of the loop.

Here is a real life example of how Facebook is better than emailing pictures. This week I went on Facebook and checked my friends' status updates. I found that my cousin had posted an album of pictures from his daughter's junior prom. I've kept up with this family pretty well, but really, the time had flown and I had no idea that his daughter was ready for the junior prom! It was great to see the pictures of how this little girl had grown up! It was even better to share her father's mixed emotions about seeing her in her prom dress with her date. Facebook had reconnected me to this part of my family in a way that an email never could. It would have been too much trouble for my cousin to remember to email me.

Facebook was also convenient for my cousin. He was able to upload his pictures once, for all of his friends and family to see. They can comment on those pictures and all the comments are in one place. He doesn't have to remember to post multiple emails.

I also learned that another cousin who lives far away from me was ill. She probably wouldn't have told me in an email, but she broadcast the news to her friends on Facebook so they wouldn't worry if she wasn't online as often as she normally is. I have many things I can do with this information: ignore it, comment on Facebook that I hope she gets better, give her a call if I don't see her online for a long time, or email her. But at least I know.

With Facebook, you can stay in the lives of the people you care about, without losing touch. Maybe a phone call is a little too much. But you can look at what people post, pick and choose what to reply to and know something about their day-to-day lives. When you actually see them, you have more to talk about because you know what's going on. I mean, what do you say to young members of your family that you haven't seen for a year? Do you fall back on the standard "relative" questions like "How's school?" and "What grade are you in now?" Isn't it much better to be able to ask how that class trip to Disney went or if they enjoyed working on the science project they posted about?

I think Boomers who say they can't be bothered with Facebook are not seeing Facebook as a tool that can enhance their lives. You don't have to invite strangers into your world unless you want to. The privacy settings let you keep your close knit group, close knit. Many boomers probably think they will be "poked" and prodded by people they don't want to know or see. Maybe you really don't want to reconnect with that high school friend who got you in so much trouble. You really don't have to.

On Facebook, you can ignore anyone you don't want to let into your circle. You can "unfriend" people who become annoying or worse, but "unfriending" is a last resort. If you need to make your Facebook experience more pleasant, consider just hiding the posts of people who write crazy status updates. One of my unnamed relatives is young, curses quite a bit and says unsavory things on Facebook. I just hide his posts. When I want to know what he is up to, I go look on his "wall."

For a short course on how to "unfriend" someone on Facebook I suggest you visit this blog post on ROM Cartridge: How to Remove Friends on Facebook or this Brighthub article: Unfriend Someone on Facebook without All the Drama.

A recent NY Times Blog post by Elissa Gootman gave this additional advice taken from Baby Boomers and others interviewed for the article:

Don’t friend somebody you don’t know.
Don’t announce on Facebook that you are leaving home, or you may get robbed.
Only write about the barbecue you’re planning if you want 1,000 people to show up.
Don’t “poke” people — it’s annoying.
If you’re 54 years old, don’t post a profile picture taken when you were 17.
“Remember, there’s malicious people out there.”

I'd add: if you want to keep your privacy, don't "like" a lot of companies or causes. Also beware of spam on Facebook. Mashable recently posted this article on the subject: HOW TO: Avoid and Prevent Facebook Spam.

Although there are dangers, I think that Facebook is worth it and I suggest you give it a try. "Friend" people you care about, post a status report that says something about what you are doing, and see how it enriches your life.

In Memory of Jean Bartik, Computing Pioneer and Friend

2011-03-31T14:43:00.000-04:00

I'm going to digress this week to write a little about a former boss of mine who recently passed away. Her name was Jean Jennings Bartik, and if you look up her name on Google you'll find pages and pages of information about her. That's because Jean was a pioneer in the computing industry. Specifically, she was one of the six women who programmed the ENIAC computer at the University of Pennsylvania. Her story has been told numerous times and she has been honored in many venues. There is even a computer museum at her alma mater named after her. I have provided links below.

However the Jean I want to talk about here is the one I met in 1973. I was a young graduate of Temple University's School of Journalism when I got a job during a very tough recession at Auerbach Computer Technology reports--the brainchild of Isaac Auerbach, himself a computer pioneer. I was struggling to learn about the parts of computers and communications gear, to describe those parts for the update service Auerbach published.

About a year after I came to work at Auerbach, I was brought into a VP's office and told I would be transferred to a department headed by Jean Bartik. This was years after Jean's work on ENIAC in the 1940s and after her stints at UNIVAC and elsewhere. In the 1970s, most of Jean's former accomplishments were forgotten. I thought the move to Jean's department was a bad move and I was upset about it. However, it turned out to be one of the luckiest career breaks I ever had.

Jean was a born teacher and she cared deeply for the cause of women in the computer industry. While Jean's name is widely known now, in the 1970s the significance of the women who programmed the ENIAC was totally ignored. The glass ceiling was firmly in place, and it didn't matter how good you were at your job. And Jean was great! During my stint as Jean's editorial assistant, she MADE SURE, I understood the technology I was writing about. She drew me diagrams, explained how things worked, and took the time to mentor me in a way no one did before or has since. Jean introduced me to the world of minicomputers and microprocessors and made me excited about this new upcoming technology. I will always be grateful for her extraordinary interest and help. When I left Auerbach to become minicomputer editor at Computerworld, she practically launched me out of her "nest."

I stayed in touch with Jean over the years and know she had to leave the industry at one point. This giant of computing wound up making a living selling real estate for a while. That changed later. The story that she told me is that sometime in the mid 80s, historian Kathy Kleiman learned about the six women who worked on ENIAC and decided to follow up. Until that time, most people thought that the women in the photos about the historic computer were models, not the people who actually wrote the programs. After Kleiman's intervention, Jean and the rest of the group were honored in many different venues, which gave Jean a platform to advocate for and advance the role of women in computing.

Jean's kindness and help have stayed with me to this day and I hope I've been able to teach the people who followed me, in the way Jean taught me. In fact, my desire to teach baby boomers about technology probably stemmed from Jean's extraordinary way of making technology accessible even to me. I would like to finish this post with a quote from Jean Bartik about how women in computing were treated in her day. This is taken from the About.com Inventors website.

I was just at the right place at the right time. It was divine providence or fate that selected me to be an ENIAC programmer. Betty Holberton quoted something interesting recently, 'Look like a girl, Act like a lady, Think like a man, and Work like a dog.' I was told I'd never make it to VP rank because I was too outspoken. Maybe so, but I think men will always find an excuse for keeping women in their 'place.' So, let's make that place the executive suite and start more of our own companies.

Some links for Jean Bartik:

IEEE Computer Society Awards
ENIAC Programmers Project
Top Secret Rosies
Obituary CNN: Computing Pioneer Jean Jennings Bartik Dies
The Jean Jennings Bartik Computing Museum at Northwest Missouri State University

When Buying Mobile Devices, Buy the Network First

2011-03-23T11:46:00.000-04:00

This week AT&T announced that it was purchasing T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. Whether or not this acquisition goes through, it brought up an issue for me. I’ve been spending my time telling Baby Boomers how to use their iPhones and iPads. What I haven’t addressed is the importance of the network in your enjoyment of these items. It's important to have strong signals and a stable network to power the devices you use. Otherwise, they don't operate well, and you won't like them.

The importance of the network hit home for me last Friday night. I was in Manhattan and meeting my husband and some friends for dinner. I was sitting comfortably at the table waiting for them to arrive. When ten minutes went by, I decided to call, first my husband, then my friends. The first thing that happened is that I couldn’t get a signal at the table where I was seated and there was no Wi-Fi available to use. In a lot of places I have free Wi-Fi through Optimum Online, but not in this particular part of New York.

I left the table to go outside the restaurant to make the call. There, my phone read that I had a signal, but two attempts at calling my husband ended up not going through. A third call went directly to voice mail. A forth call got a busy signal. I know my husband wasn’t on the phone at this time. A call to my friends also dropped and another went direct to voice mail. I tried sending a text, but that didn’t go through either.

Next, I tried sending an email, hoping that the data network was better than the voice network. You could see the symbol in the left corner of the phone, indicating that the phone was trying to catch a signal to send the email. That email was never completed. The culprit was AT&T’s network in NYC, which has been the subject of many complaints.

This is what my signal indicator looks like. The star shape shows the phone looking for a signal. This was taken inside my house where I have Wi-Fi and a strong AT&T signal (bars)

AT&T is aware of its problems in NYC and continues to upgrade its systems there. Articles have been written about people who carry two phones in NYC, one for voice calls and another for data. However, this doesn’t help you when you are stuck without cell phone service at a crucial time. Luckily, being late for dinner doesn’t qualify as crucial. However when you’ve spent hundreds of dollars on an iPhone or iPad, and you’ve gotten a data plan, you want it to work when you want it to work.

As you know, if the network is a problem you can’t take advantage of all the cool aspects of many of the apps I’ve been talking about in this column. Most of them rely on consumers being able to access a good signal, whether data or voice. Wi-Fi, while available now more than ever, isn’t always available to help you. Another problem: if you don’t have a strong network signal, your phone keeps trying and trying to download your email etc., using up your battery life.

So here’s the thing. You all know I’m an iPhone aficionado. I could have switched to Verizon for better service in NYC when Verizon announced they would carry the iPhone. I didn’t, and here is why: my house is in New Jersey and when in the past I used Verizon, I was unable to use my cell phone in my house because Verizon doesn’t have a tower nearby. AT&T, on the other hand, does have a tower nearby and I can use my AT&T phone easily in my house. I know that this problem hasn’t been overcome over the years because visitors to my house who have Verizon experience the same problem. Visitors with Sprint often find their batteries depleted as their phones continuously search for a signal.

So I’ve chosen to have cell service at home over cell service in NYC. You too will have to make similar choices. Choose the service that works best for you as an individual or your family as a whole. Then decide on the tablet or smart phone that is right for you.

If the regulators let AT&T purchase T-Mobile it will be good for some consumers and bad for others. AT&T users will have more coverage in places like NYC where cell signals are a problem. T-Mobile users will probably lose out on pricing. We will all lose out on choices. The bottom line remains, when buying your iPhone or any other mobile device, always buy the network first. Of course, as in my case, that doesn't always work out.

How Much iPad2 Do You Need, Boomers?

2011-03-10T11:00:00.002-05:00

The March 11 release date for the new iPad2 is right around the corner, but I am not going to buy one, at least not yet. The reason is simple. Despite all the improvements Apple has made to the iPad, I’m still figuring out my first generation iPad.

Like many Boomers, it takes me a while to explore new technology. My iPad still “magical” to me and delivers more entertainment and utility than one device ought to. I know I’ve groused about some of the iPad’s shortcomings, but mostly, it is a terrific device.

This blog post, however, is for those of you who are going to run out and buy the iPad2, pictured above, on March 11. I know there is pent up demand for these devices. A lot of people waited to buy, wanting to see if the tablet phenomenon was real or if people got tired of the iPad easily.

Recently a friend emailed me trying to figure out just how much storage she was going to need on her new iPad when she got one. I couldn’t tell her for sure, but judging by my use, going the middle road was a safe bet. When I bought my iPad I bought it with Wi-Fi and 3G and 32G of storage. I thought I would easily fill it up.

The truth is I haven’t come close. Most of the apps I use just don’t hog the iPad’s space. What takes up a lot of space are my pictures, but even with all of my pictures, all of my music and a few videos, I have plenty of space left.

Here are your options for the iPad2:

iPad2 With Wi-Fi : 16GB $499, 32GB $599, 64GB $699

iPad2 With Wi-Fi and 3G (your choice Verizon or AT&T): 16GB $629, 32GB $729, 64GB $829

It’s easy to overbuy when you are looking at the latest and greatest thing. To prevent this, I’d say, take a look at your computer. If you are the kind of person who runs out of storage on your computer and has to frequently upgrade or offload to a storage drive, then you’ll be the kind of person who quickly fills up the iPad.

If you are a modest computer user, you’ll be a modest iPad user too. What’s nice about the iPad is that if you are wrong, and you do fill it up, you can just select to put only a portion of your music or TV shows on the device, and the rest will stay on your PC or Mac.

A post on the Fortune website by Philip Elmer-Dewitt is a very good resource for people who are trying to figure out if they will get Wi-Fi only or 3G enabled versions, or if they will attempt to use the device as a Wi-Fi hotspot tethered to their phone.

Basically, the 3G works for commuters who want to make sure they can access their email on the iPad during their daily commute. It is also very good for those who take their iPads on the road with them and use them as laptop substitutes. And the 3G version of the iPad comes with GPS, something that is not on the Wi-Fi only version. So if you are planning to use your iPad as a navigation device, you might consider springing for the 3G version.

To make things more confusing, Apple will soon allow users to “tether’ their iPads to their iPhones if they use AT&T. That will make the iPhone a personal hotspot for your Wi-Fi only iPad2. You download your data through your phone to your iPad, in the same way you use a Wi-Fi hotspot.

This service costs $20/month, but has the advantage of letting you buy 3G service on an “as needed” basis. I don’t think many Boomers will be interested in the hotspot offering because setting it up each time you want to use it has been described as a painful experience by some who have tried.

I hope this post has been some help to those who plan to buy the iPad2 March 11 and thereafter. Good luck and enjoy!

Tell Google What You Think About Junk Search Results, Boomers

2011-03-05T12:55:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of talk lately about how Google is changing its search algorithm to get rid of some of the “junk” that pops up near the top of the list in many searches. Take a look at this article on CNN or this one on ZDNet. While some websites are adversely affected by any tweaking Google does, I will certainly welcome this change.

After all, Google made its reputation by serving more accurate search results than those other guys. The company definitely needs to keep up with the times and make sure that it delivers relevant results, or people will flee to search engines that will.

Recently, I searched for something and one of the top five sites listed in the results was basically gibberish. Now that Google made the change, I really wish I had saved the search to compare it to the "new" one. The result web site had the keywords I had searched on, but they were embedded in a sea of junk returns. It was just a waste of my time. I bet you’ve had the same experience and wondered why Google wasn’t doing anything about it.

Well, finally it is.

One of the changes Google made is removing results from so-called "content farms" from its lists. I don’t know if you Boomers are aware of the concept of content farms, but here it is. Some bright soul figured out that writers (and in some case robots) could create "news" articles that would rise to the top of the search listings by looking at what people search for, and then creating an article that includes as many of those key words as possible.

The content farm stories have legit headlines, so people click on them. When you get to the web site, you find content that is very low quality and looks like it was strung together from a number of different places. Kudos to Google for taking on content farms and putting them in their place.

But here's the rub: some "content farms" are better than others. Some publish garbage and others take search engine results and popular keywords and actually use freelance writers to create something meaningful. Here is a list of web sites that were affected by the change in the algorithm according to Sistrix and reported by ReadWriteWeb.

Google has taken another step as well. To explain this, I’ll have to explain the concept of a web browser. When you get a computer, it usually comes with a program you can use to explore the web. Mac users get Safari preinstalled. Windows users get Windows Internet Explorer. Several other companies offer browsers anyone can download for their computer. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are examples.

While a browser lets you explore by typing in web addresses, sometimes it comes equipped with its own search bar, powered by a search engine. Most of the time that search engine is Google or you can access Google search by typing http://www.google.com in your web browser. Sometimes the preinstalled search engine will be Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. You can get to Bing by typing in http://www.bing.com. Because Chrome is a Google product, it is particularly well integrated with that particular search engine.

Now Chrome users can get a plug-in, a little program to download from the website, that lets them report back to Google when sites deliver poor content or content that doesn’t match the search query. Derek Gorden says on Search Insiders:

“An important factor in all this is a new plug-in for the Chrome browser that enables users to block sites they feel do not deliver quality content relevant to the search query. The Personal Blocklist, which is available for free in the Chrome Web Store, shows up as a little red hand icon at the far right of the Chrome browser bar -- one quick click sends a message to Google that you didn't care for the content in a site listed in a search result.”

Certainly, you’ll be doing Google’s work for them, and I know a lot of us think that Google, with its billions, should be smart enough to catch these sites on their own. However, this is a clever example of what is called “crowdsourcing,” getting a lot of data from a lot of anonymous people to improve a product. I think Google’s search can use some improvement. I usually use Firefox as my browser, but I am considering using Chrome just so I can tell Google what I think.

In the mean time, take a look at your search results the next time you use Google. Are they better than they used to be? Are you delighted? Or are you ready to change to Bing? Go back in time to "Yahoo?" Try out some new search engines like DuckDuckGo?

Struggling to Remember Passwords, Boomers? Try a Password Manager.

2011-02-20T11:58:00.000-05:00

Recently, I've been struggling with passwords.I don't know if my inability to remember all my passwords is due to age, or if everyone is afflicted by it. Nevertheless, every time I go to a new website, it wants me to set up a new user name and password. It is very tempting to use the same password for everything, but all the security experts say that's wrong, that this practice leaves your data vulnerable to hackers and leads to identity theft.

Yet when I try to vary things, I find myself unable to remember which variation I chose for which website. That wouldn't be so bad, but many websites lock you out after a given number of tries, which is really frustrating to me. As many of you do, I chose to keep a list. Of course keeping a list of passwords on your computer is about as dumb as using the same password for everything. For a while I thought I was outsmarting the hackers by keeping the list in a file labeled "info for eye doctor." I've learned, however, that hackers can find those kinds of files pretty easily.

My next step was to rename the file, take it off my computer, and put in in the "Dropbox", the secure "container" for documents and photos that resides somewhere in the cloud. I wrote about Dropbox recently. Still, that didn't solve my problem. Whenever I needed a password I had to open Dropbox (which has its own password) and search through my list to find the right one.

Last week, I read an article about Google that made me think twice about my password practices. In an attempt to make Gmail and Google cloud applications like Google Documents more secure, Google is offering its users the option of a 2-step verification process so they can log into their sites more securely. The concept of 2-step verification isn't new. Some banks and other very secure sites have offered this in the past. I'd never taken anyone up on their offer to use this process to protect anything though. It just seemed too difficult to me.

With 2-step verification, a unique password is generated by the site you are trying to enter and sent to your cell phone or to some other place like your email account. (You set all this up ahead of time.) You look up this password on your email or text message and enter it in the Google site to provide that extra level of security. Luckily, you only have to do this once a month, although if you are paranoid about hackers you can do it every day. Nevertheless, it seems pretty inconvenient to me. If you want to try this, log into Google, go to My Account, then Settings, and then Google Account Settings.

Afterwards, you can go to this screen:

Once you select "Using 2-step verification" you'll be taken to this screen:

The process is easy to follow after that, but I decided it was too much for me. Besides, this would only protect my Google information. I would wind up having to implement 2-step authentication for all websites that offer it, especially those that contain personal or important information, such as my banking application. That just sounded like too much work.

For the past few years, I'd been hearing about free "Password Managers" which encrypt your passwords and auto fill them in for you when you need them. It took me a long time to want to try this. I thought it would be difficult to set up this kind of program and I worried about what would happen if something happened to the password manager company. One of my tech-savvy children was using a password manager, but two of them were not. It was time to give the program a try.

For no particular reason I decided to try out LastPass, a password manager that has been given some high marks by CNET. I think I've mentioned CNET before as a trusted source of product reviews. There are plenty of other password managers out there to try, for sure. I went to the LastPass website and downloaded the program.

I don't think that software developers really know the fears that people have when trying something brand new to them, especially something that says it will keep you safer. I had all kinds of questions about the password manager that were not answered by all of my researching. I wanted to know, for example, if I would have to add each and every password manually to the manager (no!), how it would handle sites that I couldn't remember the passwords to (it offers me alternatives), what would happen to the passwords currently stored on my computer (they are encrypted), and if I could entrust the company with my passwords. (Since you are not doing anything permanent and can still enter passwords manually, you won't loose your data. And this company says only encrypted data is sent to them, so you don't have to worry about them being hacked.) Until I actually tried out the password manager, I didn't know the answers to any of these questions.

After I downloaded LastPass, I went to my download manager in the Firefox browser, found the file and clicked on it to install it. Here is the page that you use to set up the password manager:

Notice that you have to set up a sort of "super password" to get into your LastPass account. This has to be something you will remember, but it also has to be strong enough and long enough that you will trust this password to hold the key to all your other passwords. I figured out what mine would be, checked off the terms and conditions and licenses box, and held my breath as my encrypted information was sent to LastPass.

What happened next was interesting. LastPass, created a list of all sites and passwords taken from my computer, and collected it in its Vault. After I logged on to their website using their master password, I could actually see what my passwords were. I had the option to have LastPass hide them, which I took advantage of. This is the way the Vault looks to me now, without the passwords visible:

The list included some old passwords that had been changed and some passwords that I had tried erroneously. All of these would be stored. In addition, the site created an Icon on the top of the sign in pages on my accounts such as my banking account, Google, and the Wall Street Journal. This is what the Icon looks like on my Google page:

As long as I remember my super password, or as LastPass calls it, my master password, I have access to my vault on the LastPass website. I also set up a security question so I could retrieve that master password, if a senior moment gets to me.

There are always some glitches along the way of adopting a new technology. Recently I went to one of my banks' websites, and found that LastPass didn't have that password in its vault. I wound up having to reset the password at the bank, but now LastPass has it, and I should be able to enter the site without a problem. For the most part, I've found using this program a great convenience and a great relief. Once again, I want to say that there are many other password managers that work similarly to LastPass, and you should feel free to try them. Just check out their reviews on a site like CNET before you do.

Also, I just want to mention that many of these Password managers charge extra for managing your passwords that are on your mobile phone or iPad, and that there are other password managers out there that are designed especially for mobile devices, not PCs.

Here is a list of resources about password managers:

Top Ten Reviews
Best Password Managers: Top 4 Reviewed
5 password managers for storing, protecting and syncing your personal information

Alternative Way to Remove GPS Info From Photos on the Web

2011-02-16T12:59:00.001-05:00

This is just a short update to my previous post about photos updated to the web that carry GPS information with them.

Besides being able to block that information from being collected by your phone or camera, the site Lifehacker presents ways to remove the data from your pictures, once they've already been uploaded to the web.

So if you've already posted a lot of pictures on Facebook, and you don't want the geo information to be associated with the pictures, follow the directions contained in this Lifehacker article: How Can I Remove Personal Info (Like Location) From Photographs by Whitson Gordon. The instructions for removing the offending information for Windows are very simple. Thank you to my daughter for bringing this article to my attention.

Boomers: Your Photos May Disclose More Data than You Think

2011-02-07T21:44:00.001-05:00

Recently, an ABC news video has been making the Internet rounds, exposing the fact that newer cameras and phones equipped with GPS chips are embedding location information into photos. This makes it easy for stalkers to find the addresses of the people who posted the photos. A lot of people are worried about this; I received the clip from three people in two days.

The iPhone, for example, automatically embeds the user's latitude and longitude in the "metadata" attached to each photo. If you don't want to be found for some reason, this could be dangerous. I can think of a few obvious examples: a battered woman who has left her spouse; a celebrity who wants to preserve some moments away from the paparazzi; a public official who doesn't want his "niece" found; the CEO of a financial organization that has lost its depositors' money who doesn't want journalists to find his home.

This ABC online story tells the tale of two researchers at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California who were able to find the private home addresses of a Playboy Playmate and some TV hosts. It was relatively easy to do.

It's always been relatively easy for a motivated individual to find your home address, even before these days of online look-up systems. You could just look in the White Pages. If the person was from out of your local area, you went over to the library and looked through the shelves of White Pages books stored there. Obviously, the White Pages had its limitations. In the past, if you didn't know where someone lived, you might have to go through a hundred telephone books to find them. In other words, you really needed to be motivated. And most people who didn't want to be found paid the telephone company for an unpublished listing.

However, it's now much easier, not to mention quicker, for unscrupulous people to find out where you live. The New York Times notes that:

By downloading free browser plug-ins like the Exif Viewer for Firefox (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3905/) or Opanda IExif for Internet Explorer (opanda.com/en/iexif/), anyone can pinpoint the location where the photo was taken and create a Google map.

One article said that people who list items for sale on Craigslist could be setting themselves up for robbery, just by posting a picture of the item for sale on the website. Last year, I posted a photo, taken at my home, of an old TV I wanted to sell on Craigslist. I didn't give out my address; people contacted me through Craigslist's email address, and I only contacted people who were interested and whose identity I could verify.

The TV was purchased by someone who had a business in my local area, and I was able to confirm his identity online and match the phone number he gave me in the email with his place of business. But what if the picture of the TV had been taken by a phone that was GPS enabled and had included location metadata? Then any unscrupulous person could have known where I lived and what merchandise I had. Further, if I had shown the TV in a living area of my home, they would have been able to find out much more about me. This is very unsettling. So if you ever post pictures online --of your cute grandkids, your dog, the tons of snow in front of your house--you should think about the information you are sharing.

There are many good reasons to use GPS metadata in photos. It's very convenient, for example, to post pictures to services like Flikr which then "know" where the picture was taken and label it with the location. Pictures from your trip to Japan will have exact locations attached, which for someone who forgets to record that kind of info, is very helpful when organizing albums. If you post pictures from home, you are not at risk of disclosing your location if you choose to make your photos private (an option most photo sharing sites allow) and only share them with people you know. However, if you take a lot of pictures at home and make your albums public, then you should think about the risks associated with letting everyone who has access to the site know your location.

Prompted by one of the articles I read on this subject, I visited a website called I Can Stalk You, which bills itself as "raising awareness about inadvertent information sharing." This site has hints on how to turn off GPS tracking for photos on the iPhone. Here is what I Can Stalk You has to say about turning off the GPS location information on the iPhone 4:

To see your settings, go to Settings, General, then Location Services. From there you can set which applications can access your GPS coordinates or disable it entirely.

For the iPhone 3 series of phones, users have to jump through some hoops. iPhone series 3 users can turn off ALL location based services by going to Settings, General then set Location Services to Off. While this is simple, I don't recommend doing this. You will never be able to use Google Earth, for example, or driving direction features that use your present location.

So if you want to turn off location data for the camera on the iPhone 3 series, this is what you'll need to do: Go to Settings, General, then Reset. The rest of the instructions are borrowed from this page on the website I Can Stalk You, which I strongly suggest you visit.

Be careful here! We want to select Reset Location Warnings, and then Reset Warnings. This restores all of our Location based warnings for each application to the default, which in most cases is "Ask on first use".

From here, once we enter into the default Camera app on the iPhone, we can select Don't Allow. This will prevent the Camera app from geo-tagging our photos.

Not everyone has an iPhone, and I Can Stalk You has some directions for Blackberry users and some others. Since every manufacturer has different instructions, it may take some digging for you to figure out how to disable your information on your newer camera or on your smartphone, if you choose to do so.

In this day and age it's not only technology that reveals your location, but sometimes your friends want to tag the location that a picture was taken on Facebook. ABC News provides the following information on how to protect your Facebook photos from friends who might want to disclose your location to others.

Go to your Facebook account.
Click "Account" in the top right corner.
Click "Privacy Settings.".
In the "Sharing on Facebook" section, click "Customize settings."
Scroll down to "Things others share" and make the option next to "Friends can check me into Places" read "Disabled."

So fellow Boomers, enjoy taking and posting pictures. I know you do it. I've seen those pictures of your grandkids! Tell your children about this too, and make them a little bit more aware of what data is hidden in those pictures they take and share.

Eight Ways One Boomer Uses Her iPad Daily

2011-01-31T16:23:00.000-05:00

Recently, I had a fascinating conversation with my niece who won an iPad at a charity event. She said she only uses it to play Scrabble, but that her 11 year old daughter uses the iPad for numerous things like watching downloaded TV programs and playing games. In her house, an iPad has become an entertainment device for her child. That made me think of the many ways I use my iPad, and I know I am not making as much use of it as many people. Here are eight ways I use my iPad on a daily basis.

1. Checking email. My iPad is upstairs where I don't have a "real" computer, and I don't carry my phone with me around the house. Therefore, I check my email on the iPad quite often. I usually don't write lengthy replies on the device, but save that task for my computer that has a more comfortable keyboard option. Sorry, Steve Jobs, but I really don't want to type for any length of time on the iPad's keyboard.

2. Reading books. I always have a book going on the iPad, usually in the Kindle app. With the Kindle app, I can read my books on multiple devices, and they stay in sync, so when I start to read on one device, I pick up where I left off on another, a feature I really like. Right now I am reading a book called Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst on three devices: my computer, my iPhone and my iPad.

3. Reading magazines and newspapers. I downloaded the New York Times app and the Washington Post app. I also have the USA Today app on my iPad.

I have a lot of magazines on there too, but find I spend less time reading them on the iPad than I expected. As I've said before in this blog, magazines aren't working out that well for me on the iPad. While their interactive features are interesting and engaging, I usually save magazine reading for airplane trips. Unfortunately, you can't keep the Wifi on in most airplanes, so you lose the interactivity of many of the newer apps.

3. Watching TV I missed. I have a DVR, but sometimes I miss recording a program. If it's on ABC, I watch it on the ABC app. Otherwise, I "stream" it from Netflix. The Netflix app is free, but you do have to pay Netflix's monthly subscription fee, which lets you watch practically anything the company offers on demand. One caveat, however: if you start something on one device, like your computer, and then try to watch it on Netflix on the iPad, Netflix doesn't always hold your place.

4. Finding out tomorrow's weather. OK, I'll confess. We don't watch local news at night, so I'm often clueless about the forecast. It's easy to keep up with any one of the app store's weather apps. This is The Weather Channel app that I use:

5. Playing Scrabble. This simply is one of the most addictive and fun apps out there. I play the "Solo" game, locking wits with the computer sometimes. Luckily, you can set how hard you want the computer to challenge you! Also, my husband and I "Pass and Play" taking a few turns each night before we fall into bed.So far we are pretty evenly matched although there was that one time he beat me by 100 points!

6. Looking up odd facts on Google. Google is great, and if you ever want to know what a word means or who that actor is in the old movie you are watching, Google is the place to go. I use the iPad app for finding out things on Google often.

7. Looking at my old pictures. I think the iPad is unsurpassed as a way to look through your old digital photo albums. It's just so easy to flip between pictures and the pictures look gorgeous on the device.

8. Checking Facebook---I'm not a big Facebook user, but I admit I go there almost every day to check in on people's updates and figure out what's happening with my far flung family. The Facebook/iPhone app is easy to use and also makes putting in a status update quite easy

.

What surprises me in all of this is the one thing I don't do much: surf the web. I like to use a bigger screen for that job, so when I'm looking at a lot of websites, I go to my computer. Also I don't create much using the iPad. I guess I never got past the rather hard-to-use keyboard.

Nevertheless, the iPad has eliminated the need for a laptop or netbook in our bedroom. I often ask myself if the iPad was worth the money, and my answer right now is "yes". Certainly it is a luxury gadget, but it's one that brings me pleasure and gets a lot of use.

If any of you have iPads, please let me know what you use yours for on a daily basis. It would be fun to compare notes.

I Bet You'll Be Paying for Coffee From Your Phone, Boomers

2011-01-27T20:33:00.001-05:00

Just a brief note to my loyal readers. I'm sorry I've not posted for a while. I'm getting back in the saddle now, and hope to keep this blog updated on a more regular basis. Thank you for your indulgence.

About a week ago, I heard that Starbucks was going to release an app for the iPhone that will allow people to pay for their Skinny Caramel Macchiatos with their phones. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to tell you about it. Baby Boomers are big coffee drinkers and many of us need our fix every morning. Some of us absolutely pay top dollar for our designer coffee. I'm not the only Baby Boomer in line at my local Starbucks and my husband waits in line every day in NYC for his fix of java.

One question always has been: "How can Starbucks make that line move faster?" Well, I think Starbucks actually has hit on something that will make the line move faster! Also, I think what they are doing will make it more likely that our generation will trust paying for goods and services with our phone.

Now, I've heard about elaborate schemes that let people use their phones as credit cards before, but they all required either another piece of hardware hooked up to the phone or some other elaborate effort ---which I don't think people are going to actually do. One "pilot program" I read about, is described in this Reuters article:

The program will allow select New York-area employees and customers to install small chips, supplied by Visa and its technology vendors, in their smartphones that emit radio signals over very short distances.

Customers would then "bump" their phones with point-of-sale devices in stores -- actually they need only wave the phones near the devices -- and their bank account data would be collected and their purchases completed.

Frankly, people in Japan have been using their phones for years as a mobile wallet, but in the case of Japan, I believe the phone company takes the charges and collects the money on the bill. Here, credit card companies and banks want to be involved. But the Starbucks solution is perfect for small purchases. And people usually will use their credit cards to "buy" the gift card that is being used.

First, download the Starbucks Card Mobile App from the App Store, then buy a Starbucks gift card or "stored value" card from your local Starbucks. You can even buy one online and have it emailed to yourself, but to test this app out I bought a card for $25.00.

The app prompts you to enter the card number and a passcode, which is scratched off from the gift card. After you've entered those numbers, you've registered your card.

You don't have to do anything else to register your card, but if you wish to accumulate points and to qualify for a free birthday drink, you can register for the Starbuck's loyalty program as in the screen above. You can also reload your card online at Starbuck's website:

Today I took my phone out to my local Starbucks for a test run. After ordering my 140 calorie Skinny Caramel Macchiato, I touched the portion of the card below that says "Touch to Pay" then handed my phone to the cashier to scan the bar code that appeared. For obvious reasons, I've changed the bar code picture below.

After the cashier was finished I touched the button that said "Touch When Done", and my purchase registered on my phone. I liked using the app because there was no fumbling in my purse for my credit card or for cash, no change to worry about, no signing, no making sure that my credit card got back into my wallet.

Simply put it was quick and easy, and I think it will be the future --how all of us will pay for small items. I definitely think Starbucks will be the merchant to make mobile payments accessible even to those of us who reject such notions. And I think that this is one technology that baby boomers will readily adopt.

The Gift of Free e-Books this Holiday Season, Boomers!

2010-12-15T17:33:00.000-05:00

I can't tell you how it breaks my heart to publish this post. My sister, Anita Lyons, has been helping me with these, checking for typos and spelling errors, for the last few months. This is the last post she helped me with before she passed away. I will always be grateful to her for her interest in my work, her devotion to language, and her love of family.

Once again, apologies for not publishing on a timely basis. I am still working on my thesis, and hope to get back to regular posts once it is finished. While I'm a bit overwhelmed right now, I wanted to give you a kind of holiday gift this season: the present of free reading. I'll explain.

I always read Rob Pegoraro's Faster Forward posts in the Washington Post, and at the end of November he wrote one about Amazon. Apparently, Amazon has been charging Kindle users a fee for books that are essentially free! The titles in question are not just public domain books, but books that have been formatted for Project Gutenberg by volunteers, Pegoraro said. In October, he had received an email from one of the volunteers:

"Gutenberg contributor Linda M. Everhart complained in an e-mail in late October that Amazon was selling a title she'd contributed to Gutenberg, Arthur Robert Harding's 1906 opus "Fox Trapping," for $4."

"They took the text version, stripped off the headers and footer containing the license, re-wrapped the sentences, and made the chapter titles bold," wrote Everhart, a Blairstown, Mo., trapper. She added that "their version had all my caption lines, in exactly the same place where I had put them."

That made me wonder if Baby Boomers and others who are new users of e-book readers actually knew about Project Gutenberg, a great free site for books that are out of copyright. You can download all the classics from this site without paying a cent or even registering. If you like the site, and want to contribute to its upkeep, then you can donate to it. Otherwise, you can use the books there as you wish. To download the books to your Kindle, choose the Kindle format. You can also find "epub" formatting for most books and Apple formatting for some books.

Here is a link to Project Gutenberg's top 100 most downloaded books. When I looked on the day I wrote this blog Sherlock Holmes, A Christmas Carol, Huck Finn and Pride and Prejudice were all on the list, as was an audio book from an author I've never heard of called The Song My Paddle Sings, a poetry book by Canadian author E. Pauline Johnson.

Yesterday, I went to the site and decided to download some Sherlock Holmes. I took a look at Project Gutenberg's mobile site, which is in development but worked fine for me, and found that Adventures of Sherlock Holmes mysteries were listed there.

After I clicked on The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I came to this page:

At the bottom, it listed a number of different formats for reading. Since I have the Kindle program on my iPad, my iPhone and my computer, I decided to download it in the Kindle format.

I selected Kindle within this list, and within moments the book opened on my computer within my Kindle app.

In my life, I've revisited some of the classics many times, and this is one way to do it without leaving the house, going to the library or paying a penny. So visit Project Gutenberg and enjoy the wealth of material on that site. I hope you like my "gift."

In my next post I'll show you how to get those Project Gutenberg books off of your PC and onto your mobile device. I also plan to discuss other sources of free reading material for the iPad and e-readers.

What kind of Tablet Should You Buy, Boomers?

2010-12-10T12:20:00.002-05:00

Hello, Boomers. Once again I want to apologize for not publishing in this blog recently. I am in the midst of putting the finishing touches on my thesis and will return to blogging once that is complete. In the meantime, a colleague of mine, Gerry Purdy, of MobileTrax, LLC has written an email giving his advice to family and friends about what kind of tablet they might want to buy for the holidays. Most of Gerry's e-mail newsletters are written for the industry, but I thought this one was applicable to you. With his kind permission, I reprint it here.

I’ve had a number of friends and relatives ask me, “What tablet should you buy for the upcoming holidays?” The question is a good one to consider because there are so many choices this year. Remember that just a year ago the only ‘tablet’ in high volume production was the Kindle eReader. Now, there’s the new (better but still B&W) Kindle, the color nook from Barnes & Noble (really an eBook reader), the full function Apple iPad, the Galaxy Tab from Samsung and products announced from Dell (Slate) and RIM (BlackBerry PlayBook). I’ll focus on the first four products in this issue as I haven’t yet seen the Slate or PlayBook which are not yet shipping in volume.

Each one of these tablet devices may be right for you depending on your personal preferences. Of all the current tablets, Apple has created the most emotional appeal with its commercials emphasizing the “magical iPad”.

First, if you only want to read a book, then the Kindle will adequately meet your needs. The latest offering includes a 6” black & white display that provides higher contrast than previous models. It includes Wi-Fi & free 3G to download books from any location in the world and costs $189. There’s a Wi-Fi only version for $139, but I recommend spending $50 more to get one with built-in 3G. Amazon has the largest book collection, so the Kindle is a great gift for someone who’s an avid book reader and not likely to want the advanced features of a tablet.

The next step up is the Barnes & Noble nook that now includes a color display. They have announced support for a number of magazines that predominantly include color diagrams and photos. This isn’t a full tablet as it doesn’t support an OS like Apples iOS or Google’s Android, but it greatly expands the classes of content that can be displayed on a tablet device.   This first version of the color nook only has Wi-Fi, but I expect you’ll see a color nook with 3G cellular wireless, since 3G is already provided in older nook models.

For the past six months, the full tablet arena was owned by Apple with the launch of the first version of the iPad. It has a larger 10” display, and the Apple App Store now includes thousands of applications that are designed specifically for the iPad. A good example is the app produced to provide a great experience for reading color-enhanced newspapers, magazines and periodicals.

I recently wrote a column (September 15, 2010) that declared the death of the physical newspaper within 10 years as the number of color tablets grows to hundreds of millions. I expect publishers to offer a better tablet-based content reading and searching experience versus what can be provided on paper. Rupert Murdoch has announced plans to publish a new digital newspaper called The Daily which will be delivered overnight to tablets.   That’s the sign of the future.

The iPad has two great ways to read books: 1) iBooks (formatting method for just the iPad that is cool - pages flip graphically) and the iBook Store (library of iPad enhanced books like iTunes provides a library of music and videos) and 2) Amazon Kindle Reader for the iPad so you can get all of Amazon's digital books (millions of them) on your iPad. All of the books I have read on the iPad came out of the Amazon/Kindle library because it has significantly more titles.

I have found the iPad to be a much different experience than I thought it would be. First, it’s much more of a ‘pass around’ kind of device that is different from either an iPhone or a notebook/Mac. It’s easy to access photos or other things and just pass it to someone.

Pandora works well with the iPad (because it has good speakers). We sometimes just play background music, since it creates channels based on the music you like.

Email is easier on the iPad than the iPhone simply because it’s easier to see and much easier to type a reply. It doesn’t replace Outlook on the Mac/PC notebook, but still it’s easier to manage than with a phone.

I like the Amazon book store on the iPad as it has all of the books that are available with the Kindle. I suspect that you’ll just find that you can get books from Amazon (download the Amazon/Kindle app for the iPad), as well as some books from the iBook store, and end up just not needing the Kindle. If you have an older Kindle and are getting a new tablet like the iPad, give the Kindle to someone else who would enjoy reading books.

Just like with the iPhone, you sync up the iPad via 'Apple connector' to your notebook (Windows or Mac). You can then transfer files, photos and videos through the connector and using iTunes. All of your iTunes content is immediately available on your iPad -- which is nice (and not available on the Samsung Galaxy). And, you can make phone calls with the iPad using Skype and Wi-Fi.

The iPad will display PDF documents, allowing you to view them when out with friends or business associates. I use it with other people showing them PDF versions of presentations or documents or photos all the time. You'll be amazed that it becomes your group meeting interactive, pass around device.

I just acquired a Galaxy Tab. The screen is smaller at 7”, but it feels very comfortable holding and carrying it around. It has a camera, MicroSD slot for additional storage, and supports Adobe Flash -- thus easily displaying any web site that utilizes Flash technology. It can also be used to set up a mobile hotspot.

The Galaxy Tab is definitely 'better' (more features) than the iPad, but it's just coming out. Both have wireless with Wi-Fi built in, but I would recommend getting any tablet with 3G, as I have found you need access at times when Wi-Fi isn’t available. You can sign up for their least expensive wireless data plan, but make sure you use Wi-Fi for large downloads and apps like Pandora (streaming music) which consume a lot of bandwidth.

It seems clear to me that tablets will become a ‘must have’ for technology savvy individuals this year and then migrate into the enterprise market next year. By 2012, I expect tablets to be become part of what I refer to as ‘the three mobile device world’ which includes a notebook PC/Mac, SmartPhone and tablet. You talk and review with the SmartPhone, think and reflect with a tablet, and create and explore with a notebook/Mac.

If you want to get that ‘Ooooh’ and ‘Ahhhh’ (along with some ‘Eeeeeks’ and ‘OMGs’), give someone you love an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab this holiday season. You’ll be so cool and receive lots of love.

Written by:

J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.

Principal Analyst

Mobile & Wireless

MobileTrax LLC

gerry.purdy@mobiletrax.com

404-406-5309

Think of the iPad for Your Elderly Parents, Boomers

2010-11-10T10:14:00.001-05:00

I know that many Baby Boomers are still in the sandwich generation, caring for loved ones who now are elderly. It's been interesting to me to find out that some of us are using technology to enhance the quality of life of older people whose minds might be shining as brightly as ever, but who have some physical limitation that keeps them tethered to home or even in a nursing home.

In the past, it was difficult to envision packing mom or dad's expensive and fairly heavy laptop with them to go to assisted living, and impossible to figure out how to get Internet access for the laptop. However, with the advent of the iPad older people are bringing their connections to the outside world inside with them.

I recently watched a YouTube video and a news report showing a 99 year old woman with glaucoma rediscovering her love of reading and writing poetry using an iPad which lets her see the letters because of the contrasting screen. I also had been following some posts on the Boomer social networking site eons (www.eons.com) by a devoted daughter, screen named Techie44, who wanted to keep in touch with her 94 year-old mom even though the daughter would be spending the winter many miles away. I contacted Techie44 and asked if I could share her story and she graciously agreed.

In the beginning, Techie44 wasn't sure if the iPad would work for her mom, but she thought that her mother, who has rheumatoid arthritis and is in a nursing home, might be able to master it. I read through Techie44's posts as she weighed the pros and cons of getting what was then a brand new device for her mom. One thing was telling, however. Her mom was already familiar with email and wanted to have her email with her in the nursing home.

After showing her mother the family's iPad and how it worked, Techie44 ordered one for her with Wi-fi and 3G and set up her mother's email accounts to sync with the iPad. She also sent her mom some email so she could practice replying. Thinking about what would make her mom happy, she also loaded the iPad with the Christmas and classical music that her mother loves and put in pictures of the family, as well as some photos of the family camping vacations, since that's what her mom used to love to do.

Significantly, Techie44 signed up for Apple's MobileMe, an application that keeps mobile devices in sync. This was suggested to her by one of the other eons posters and it turned out to be very important. The iPad is the kind of device that can be picked up easily and just "walk out the door" of a nursing home. MobileMe has a feature called "Find my iPhone/iPad" and if someone walked away with the device, it could let Techie44 know where it is.

In an email, Techie44 told me she put a sticker on the outside of the iPad notifying everyone that it could be tracked and that she demonstrated how she could track the device to the people at the nurses station. She also told them that she would prosecute if the device were stolen. Although she didn't tell me this, I expect she was hoping word of mouth would spread, and anyone thinking of walking away with the device would be forewarned. She also took the added precaution of selecting a pass code her mom could remember, so no one else could borrow the device.

Now I've always contended that MobileMe should be free, and not the $99/year product it is, but I'm willing to say that in this case it's worth the money. An added benefit of MobileMe is that Techie44 can link her mom up to a "cloud" photo gallery, and the family can update and add pictures to it from wherever they are, without having to load them directly onto the device. This was also pointed out by another eons poster.

So how is it going? Techie44's mom has arthritis, so hitting all the right icons and keys on the iPad is somewhat of a challenge, but she is managing, and enjoying the device. She does most of her typing herself but an aide helps her type long letters. She's listened to her music on the device, but had a bit of a problem figuring out how to shut it off. Thinking ahead, Techie44 showed someone at the nursing home the ins and outs of the iPad so they could help her.

In addition, Techie44 signed her mom up for the Facebook app, so now "Granny" can follow her grand nieces and nephews on the social networking site. She also downloaded an app called iFish Pond that will help her mom pretend she is sitting by a pond when the weather gets cold.

Techie44 says that she made the right choice in getting her mom an iPad. A computer would have had to sit on a table and her mother would have had to deliberately go to it. The iPad is easy for her mom to carry with her, and the 3G wireless solves the problem of getting Internet access in a nursing home, something that could prove to be nearly impossible.

One last thing: Techie44 says that the iPad has made a tremendous difference in the quality of her mother's life. She is connected to relatives she hadn't heard from for years and looks forward to receiving her email and photos from her family. You can't find a more ringing endorsement than that.

I know the post above makes it look like I endorse the iPad or that I'm employed by Apple, but I assure you I am not. I simply believe that this genre of tablet has opened up a new era of computing and is beneficial for society. Many, many tablets are coming into the market soon, but right now Apple essentially stands alone. If the upcoming Linux Android tablets are as easy to use as the iPad, as this author predicts, they too will gain traction with the elderly and will add to the societal goal of helping them stay connected.

A New Way to Back Up Important Files; Try DropBox, Boomers

2010-11-02T09:46:00.001-04:00

First, I want to apologize for the length of time between blog posts. As you know, I returned to school to get my Master's degree, and now I'm working on my thesis. The deadline for the thesis is nearing and I've been spending a lot of hours working on it, and so I've neglected this blog. Today I pulled myself away from that work because I found something I think will be really interesting to most Boomers.

Specifically, I came across an article called The 25 Worst High-Tech Habits (and how to fix them) in The Washington Post online and believe it or not it's written in a way most of us can understand. Getting to the gist of it, the author, who is with PC World, says there are certain things that people do when they have computers and high tech gadgets that are not in their best interest. I had to laugh when I saw the list, because a few of my bad habits are on there.

The very first thing the author deals with is Avoiding Security Software. Some people think they can just be careful on the web, and they won't get infected by all the viruses out there, but it's really impossible to surf that carefully. Many sites that appear to be legitimate aren't. However, I do understand why some people won't put up with security software. I've found that my security software sometimes interferes with some of the other programs I want to run. And my software often does a mini-scan of my systems when I'm in the middle of something important. All I can do is wait for it to finish because it slows down the entire machine. However, you should run some kind of security software on your computer, Boomers.

The author also takes to task people who don't back up their computer, something with which I can relate. The author has a wake up call for those of us who don't back up. "All hard drives crash eventually. All of them. Yours will too." The article provides a link to a simple guide to get started with backup, although I looked at it and didn't find the guide so simple. I haven't found backup all that simple period. Every time I purchase a hard drive to back up my data, something happens to it that I can't undo. I have to go running to my computer savvy son to help me out. Still backing up is important, and I encourage you to back up your important docs. For another point of view on this matter check out the web site, and my competitor, BoomerTechTalk (www.boomertechtalk.com), and their article Backing Up is Not Hard to Do.

While I don't back up my disk as much as I should, I've found a way to protect my important documents (including the thesis I've been working on so diligently that has kept me from updating this blog more frequently) by using a program for my PC called Dropbox.(www.dropbox.com) Once again, I have my son to thank for introducing me to this ingenious app. When you arrive at the Dropbox site, you are greeted by this:

Have you ever seen anything so simple on a web page? When you click to watch the video, you get a very good explanation of how to use this application, which is simple and smart. Basically, you are dragging documents you've created to the Dropbox folder, which is a kind of locked box that only you can access. No matter where you are, you can open your Dropbox and get your important documents from this locked box. One word of caution though, be sure to remember your password. (I'll have more on keeping track of passwords in a future blog post.)

So if you are working on a particularly important document, you can store a copy in the Dropbox, and if your computer crashes, the document will be there, accessible from the website. Dropbox even keeps the document updated for you, so you don't have to worry that the version in your computer is different from the one you are accessing at your hotel or, in my case, on the school computer. You can also download the app for the iPhone and iPad and open your documents on these devices. Many Boomers would probably be worried about the security of this app, but Dropbox has thought of this and says it uses " military grade encryption methods to both transfer and store your data."

Well, I'm heading back to work on my thesis now, Boomers. I'll check back in to this blog as soon as I can.

You Can Save Web Material to Read Later, Boomers

2010-10-17T11:43:00.000-04:00

I recently came across an app called Instapaper, which has been added to some top 10 app lists, and I thought it might be of interest to Boomers, especially those of us with iPhones or iPads. It's pretty simple to use, but could save you a lot of squinting. OK, so I know our eyes aren't what they used to be!

Basically, as you are reading on the web, either on your computer, on your iPhone or even on your iPad, you can save what you are reading to read later, when you have time, and you can read it in a text only format that is easier on the eyes. I signed up for Instapaper at the website www.instapaper.com.

It's a very simple sign-up procedure as you can see. After you sign up, you have access to a "Read Later" button that you can drag to your tool bar. To drag it in Windows, just place your mouse over the button, left click the mouse and move it into place on the tool bar.

As you browse the web and you find things you don't want to read quite yet, you can hit the "Read Later" button and Instapaper saves the articles for you. When you are ready to go back to them, just sign into your Instapaper account, and there they are. I was browsing the web for some ideas for this blog and here is the way the two articles I wanted to read later are listed. You can see that both are from an industry paper called InformationWeek, but this could easily be the New York Times or CNN online. Do you see the button that says "Text?" That means that you can see this article in a text only format, devoid of the chaos around it.

Where this application really shines is when you use it on your iPhone or iPad, during those slow times when you are waiting in line or in the doctor's office. You can check to see if there are any articles in your queue, and read away. You'll always know that what is there, is material you wanted to read.

I downloaded the free version of Instapaper for my iPhone via the iTunes App. Once again it was very easy to download the app and when I signed in with my email address, my list of articles above was right there. A couple of caveats about the free version. You may get some off color advertising with it . You are warned of this before loading the app via a warning which says you have to be over seventeen to use it. Also, on the free version, you can only keep a list of ten articles to read later. If you want more, you'll have to pony up for the $4.99 paid version. I understand the paid version lets you adjust the fonts, a great boon for Boomers.

My advice is to use the free version for a while to get a feel for the application. Then, if you find the advertising annoying enough, or find the fonts too small, or run into the limitations on the number of articles you can store, you can consider giving the developer his $4.99.

Here is the way the Skype article from InformationWeek that I saved to Instapaper looks.

You often get an option to open the page in Safari, so you can see what it is like on web. InformationWeek has a nicely optimized site for its information, so you will find the article in an easy-to-read format. In other cases you won't be so lucky and Instapaper's clean, clear presentation will be important to you.

Another useful app along the same lines is called Readability. Although this works just on the web, I guarantee that you'll be amazed at how much easier to read it makes web-based articles. Although this little button doesn't let you save anything for later, you'll want to use Readability whenever you are surfing the web and want to get rid of some of the website clutter.

I went to the website and selected my settings, from the options of Style, Size, and Margin. Then I dragged the "Readability" button to my tool bar, much in the same way I had dragged the "Read Later" button. Next, I surfed the web. Here is how the CNN article about the miners who were trapped in Chile looked on my Firefox browser.

And this is how it looks by clicking Readability.

I know there are many other web and mobile apps that Boomers are using to their advantage. If there is something you really like, suggest it in the comments section below, and I'll take a look. Maybe if we pool our resources we can come up with a list of great apps for Boomers.

The Joy of Groupon and the Coupon Wild West

2010-10-03T17:07:00.000-04:00

I'm not a big user of coupons, online or cut out of the newspaper or magazines. I tend to wait for the big sales, and then if the coupon says 20% off, or a couple of dollars back, I take the trouble to cut out the coupon, download it and print it, and make sure I tote it to my local store. I'm sure many of you Boomers out there save hundreds of dollars with great couponing techniques, but this isn't what this column is about. I want to tell you about some big savings I've found online and used to my advantage.

Many people who go online have seen ads for something called Groupon. This is a site that sends out localized offers for big savings at businesses in the viewer's town, nearby or online. One day you might find a Groupon for spa services and the next day a discount to create a photobook, or a great deal on a restaurant. The key to Groupons is that they require a massive number of people to sign up for the deal for "the deal to be on."

Here's how it works. You go onto the Groupon site and register. You do have to give them your credit card information, but nothing is charged until you accept a deal. Then the emails start. The other day I received a "Groupon" offer in my email to create a $30 photo book for $10. My husband's aunt had just had a 90th birthday party and my husband had taken some pictures there. I thought it would be fun to put those pictures in a photobook, but frankly, I didn't want to spend $30. This offer was just what I needed. I signed up, and received a notice that enough people had signed up for "the deal to be on." Groupon charged me $10, and later sent me a link to the photo website and a coupon code to use when I was checking out, so I would get the deal.

I won't name the photo website I went to, but the photo book wasn't particularly easy to put together. The directions were a bit hard to follow, but I finally got it done, and sent it off to my husband's aunt, who was thrilled with the results. I had to pay some additional taxes and shipping and handling, but I did get a real bargain on this photo book, and I tried out the photo website. Unfortunately for this vendor, the website is a bit too hard to use, and I probably won't be coming back unless they make some improvements. However, the Groupon deal was a really good one.

One drawback to Groupon deals is that they almost always have a time deadline. Right now I am sitting on a coupon ($20 for $40 worth of food) to one of my favorite local restaurants that almost never offers discounts, but the coupon is only good for another two weeks. If I want to get my money's worth, I have to make sure I use this Groupon soon!

The Coupon Wild West

While Groupon is a great legitimate site, let's face it, Boomers, many of you may be wary of using web coupons. It's like the wild west out there, with fake coupons and bad checkout codes proliferating. Back in June some Internet scammers circulated an email coupon for a free bag of Doritos, costing Frito Lay a lot of money. You can read about it here. This is just one of the scams that spread "virally" on the web so its no wonder that some of your local grocery stores refuse to accept Internet coupons as a matter of policy. This happened to me when my local supermarket decided to stop accepting Internet coupons for a very long time. Believe me, this decision created some problems with some of its customers.

On her website, celebrity coupon mom Stephanie Nelson features a list of legitimate, authenticated sites you can use to print out grocery coupons. You can find the list here. These include SmartSource and RedPlum.

Some of these sites ask you to download their software before you can print out the coupons. That's one way to keep the coupons legit, but I understand that there are many Boomers out there who don't want to have to put one more program on their computers!

Several sources offer advice for people who want to save money and make sure their coupons are accepted at the store. The first and foremost hint is to bring the whole page with you. If you bring the whole page with you, the address of the website will be printed on the paper, so your store can see it is a coupon from a legitimate site. Also make sure the bar code, expiration dates and all fine print are readable. If they are not, grocery store clerks are probably not going to take the coupon. More hints are available here, in an About.com article.

Many of us also want to take advantage of websites that collect lists of coupons available online and usable at online merchants, but these too are fraught with problems. There are just too many sites out there that purport to provide coupon codes you can use in online checkouts, but when you try to use them, the codes don't work or they've expired. In the past, trying to be a savvy shopper, I did try using some of the codes on coupon sites. I was almost never successful, and it was a frustrating process.

Recently I heard of a website that is trying to combat that problem. It's called CouponAlbum.com. Don't think I'm endorsing it, because I'm not since I haven't really tried it out myself. The site seems to be on the right track, though, and appears to have.some backing from the Better Business Bureau. CouponAlbum.com says it verifies and updates coupons on a consistent basis using a quality assurance team. There may be other sites that do this, but I haven't heard of them. Anyway, that's what is needed, if the world of online couponing is to become less like the Wild West.

A Wealth of FREE Online Education Awaits Boomers

2010-09-25T12:53:00.000-04:00

Reading my most recent Temple Review, the alumni magazine for Temple University where I received my journalism degree so many years ago, I came across this quote from Nancy Henkin, executive director, the Intergenerational Center at Temple. Talking about Boomers she said,

"Essentially, we have added a new stage to life. But for most people it's not about what stage you are in; it's about the overall journey."

Henkin's statement made me think about my journey and the journey of others around me, and how technology has changed that journey.

As you all know, I went back to Pace University for my master's degree in publishing a few years ago, and with luck and perseverance, I will finish it this December. I took about half of my courses online, and I wrote about that experience previously. I know others who went back to school recently, life long academics who are returning to school to be retrained, to take up new interests, to do something different.

However there are Boomers out there who just want to learn as much as they can about different topics, who want to exercise their brains, and who aren't after a degree. Unlike the scarecrow in the Wizard of OZ, they don't need a diploma. As the Wizard said:

"We have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma."

And there are those of us with enough degrees already. Recently, my husband --a very accomplished man with several degrees, not in science-- became interested in the topic of Biology and Evolution. At first he found several PBS Nova TV shows online about the topic, but that wasn't enough. He wanted to delve into the subject deeper. My son pointed him to the wealth of university lectures available online, and for the last week or so, he has been watching and listening to lectures on this topic given by a professor from Yale University.

Just think about that, Boomers! We may not be the first generation of people to return to school after their children are grown. (I had an uncle who consistently audited college courses after he retired.) However, we are the first generation to have such a wealth of free educational materials available to us online. We are the first generation that doesn't have to travel to enrich our lives with education. You can have arthritis, be a shut in, and still benefit. My uncle had to travel to the campus to take his course, he had to enroll in classes, even to audit them. However, if you don't care about getting a degree, you don't have to enroll. You don't have to pay anything--except the cost of a broadband or even a dial-up connection-- to get this education.

And it's not just any education. We can see lectures from the best educators at the best universities. If you don't understand the subject matter the first time, you can listen to the lectures as many times as you want. How wonderful is that? And how powerful?

How do you find these lectures?

Go to Google and type in "University Lectures Online Free" and your search results will come up with a number of choices.

A trip to Yale's Open Courses at www.oyc.yale.edu brings you to this page or one similar. The featured courses change frequently:

If you click on the Courses tab, you'll find the whole list of courses offered online. It's quite extensive, but Yale is far from the only college that gives away its education for free. YouTube has many lectures given by university professors posted as does iTunes. In both of these websites, all you have to do is search for "university lectures." Some lectures are available in video form, some can only be listed to as an MP3 or a Podcast. You can listen to a lecture on the Economic Crisis and Globalization, or one about the Geography of US Presidential Elections, or Art History and English lectures. Whatever your desire, you can dabble in these courses, and if you are very interested, you can listen to the entire series.

A while ago, I posted about brain games for Boomers. Playing games that are difficult for you and require you to learn a new way of thinking is definitely something Boomers should do. Scientists speculate that playing games help you create new synapses and help keep your brain young. But so does learning any new skill or concept.

For enjoyment, I highly recommend online courses by great lecturers. I believe you will find listening and viewing rewarding and also strangely compelling. Once you start being bombarded with new ideas, you'll want to keep going.

Happy learning, Boomers!

Blog Basics for Boomers

2010-09-19T22:31:00.000-04:00

Ideas for this Tech and the Baby Boomer come from a number of places. About a week ago, my brother-in-law said he wanted to start a blog, but didn't know how to begin. So in this entry, I'll talk about the mechanical part of how I started my blog and give some good references for people who want to start one. I'm assuming that Boomers and others reading this have a good idea for a blog, and want to try it out.

I know there are many competing, free, blogging "platforms" that people can use, but I wanted something that could be up and running within minutes and felt intuitive to use. After watching my daughter post her blog, I chose Blogger, Google' s blogging software, hosted on their site. For the most part it has been easy to use and not intimidating at all.

To get to blogger, I went to Google's home page, and looked for the listings at the top of the page. I pressed "More."

After that I pressed the "even more" tab at the bottom. That opens up a screen with a vast array of options, including ones under Communicate, Share & Save.

.
Here you'll find a connection to Blogger, Google's blogging platform. When you click on Blogger you'll find a page that looks like this:

You can sign into Blogger with your free Google account, and create a blog. As you can see Google has many tools for you to use to understand how to start the blog. You can take their Quick Tour or watch a video about how Blogger works.

If you don't have a free Google account, you'll be asked to sign in to the account, create passwords, and accept Google's terms of service.

After you've filled in the form, you are ready to pick a name for your blog.

And after you've selected a name, you'll be asked to select how you want your blog to look from a few simple designs.

Choose one of the Templates, or designs, offered. Once you select one of the templates, you'll see a note that your blog has been created. If you want to start posting, you can, by hitting the Start Blogging button.
You'll be taken to a page that looks like this:

You can start blogging right away, but I'd suggest taking some time to take a look at the Settings page. Here is where you can decide if you want your blog publicized to the entire Internet, or if you want to keep it to a limited number of selected individuals. If you only want the members of your community --a club, a group, your friends, your family --to see the blog then select the appropriate settings.

Once you've selected your settings, go back to the blank blog entry, take a minute and decide on a title for today's post, and write. If you want to see how what you are writing or posting looks before you publish it hit the Preview button. You can go back and make changes before you publish. If you hit the publish button,and then want to make changes to your post, you can, just by selecting the Edit Posts tab.

That's pretty much all there is to it to get started in blogging. Of course, once you get started you might want to consider issues like how many people are reading your blog or how to make money blogging.

In this post, I gave you a step-by-step overview on how to use Blogger, and I hope it helps any Boomers out there who might want to take their first baby steps into this online world. Blogging can be therapy, it can be a way to share ideas or pictures with a select group or a wider audience, it can be an online diary, or a way for you to share expertise with an audience. Frankly, I think more Boomers should get into blogging and I hope this post inspires you to do it.

Here are some additional resources beginner bloggers can use to learn about blogging:

Here is a link to the Google YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU4gXHkejMo

Here are a couple more articles about starting a blog:

http://www.wikihow.com/Start-a-Blog

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/11/10/the-easiest-instructions-for-how-to-start-a-blog/

Reading on the Beach for Boomers --iPad Vs. Kindle

2010-09-12T11:31:00.001-04:00

I was very lucky that this summer ran into fall, and our family had a beautiful, sunny Labor Day weekend, as they say here, "down the Jersey shore." The first thing I want to tell you is that my Jersey shore is nothing like the TV show. We go to a beautiful little family-oriented town, calm and peaceful, with a great beach.

The second thing I want to tell you is this: reading on the beach with the iPad is not an experience I'd recommend. The glare of the sun on the iPad screen made reading very difficult. Yet, I wanted to try it out, and try it out I did, squinting through an entire book. My family was somewhat amused, especially those who vow not to give up paper reading. I must admit that I didn't realize that you could change the background color to sepia, and that reduces the glare a bit, and you can adjust the brightness of the screen.

Still, walking out into the bright sunshine today I see that it really doesn't solve the problem. Since the iPad has a touch screen, each time you touch it you leave fingerprints. Normally, you don't see them. Under the glare of a beautiful beach day, or even a sunny fall day, you see every one. Yet my iPad has been so good for almost everything else I've wanted to do with it, I'd never give it up now.

Another drawback, but one that applies to all e-readers, is that others can't tell what you are reading. My sister-in-law saw how much I was enjoying my book, and had to ask me what I was reading. That's because e-books have no covers to show the world. The covers appear inside the iBook application, for the reader's eyes only. Publishers have long used cover art for marketing their books, and when you are walking down an airplane isle, don't you take a peek at what others are reading? One day, I'm sure, iBooks and all of the other e-readers, will have a way to tell the world what you are currently reading, if you want them to, and everyone will benefit from this. Maybe the answer will be a second screen on the back of the device, to display the cover of the novel that so engrosses you.

All that being said, I'd like to tell you some of the features of the iBook app that I really like. I like looking at my books on the library shelf. That's where you see the covers of the books you've downloaded. As you can see, I don't have a lot of books on my shelf as of yet, since I wanted to try the device out in various environments.

I also like that the book has a clear table of contents. Here is a sample of the Contents from Hangman, by Faye Kellerman.

I really liked that Apple's format tells you how far along in the book you are and how far in the chapter. A little note comes up at the bottom right of the page saying something like "there are 15 pages left in this chapter."

It's amazing how much I missed those measures--the equivalent of flipping through the pages--on the Kindle I tried last year. They definitely help me figure out if I'm going to have enough time to finish the chapter before I start something else. The new Kindle app for the iPhone says what "location" you are at and what percentage of the book you have finished but it doesn't give quite the same feeling as the Apple app does.

So the dilemma still remains: do you go for an excellent single use device like the Kindle or a Nook, or do you go for a multi-use device that has some serious drawbacks? The prices of the dedicated e-readers have come down, and you can now purchase a Kindle for as little as $139 and a Barnes & Noble Nook for as little as $149. I've seen some other e-readers advertised for under $100. Those numbers look really good compared to the $499 starting price of the iPad, but then the iPad does so much more.

I've made my choice, Boomers, but you may make a different one. I've seen the ads for the Kindle, the ones showing people sitting on the beach, reading comfortably, and I can say, if all you want to do is take your device to the beach to read, then maybe the Kindle or any other e-reader made with e-Ink is for you.

Boomers Will Like the Interactive RollingStone 500 Greatest Song Issue

2010-08-25T19:35:00.001-04:00

In my last blog post, I talked about RollingStone Magazine's interactive issue, which users can download for the iPad through the Zinio app. What sets this magazine apart is the clever way it is designed to take advantage of the interactive features of the iPad. Here's how you get it. First download the free Zinio App from the App store. When you open the Zinio App, you'll find a "store" inside. Inside the store, there is a listing for interactive magazines. Choose the RollingStone 500 Greatest Songs of All Times Issue.

You'll have to give Zinio a credit card number to get this app, but once you download it and pay the $9.99, a hefty price for an app, you get a magazine chock full of information. There are a couple of feature stories such as this interview with Leiber and Stoller,

and short articles about each of the songs and artists chosen, as well as a way to listen to 30 seconds of each song.

The number one designated song in the magazine is Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan, and next to it are icons for reading about it, listening to 30 seconds of it, and buying it.

In fact, many of the top 500 songs will be familiar to Baby Boomers and come from artists we know and love like the Beatles, John Lennon , The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys. The app easy to use and fun to listen to.

What's significant about the magazine is the spirit of discovery that it encourages. You are only wasting 30 seconds of your time if you tap on an unfamiliar song and don't like it, so you keep on tapping. That's when I found out that all hip hop wasn't created equal. Number 51 on the list, right next to The Tracks of My Tears by Smokey Robinson, was The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I listened to 30 seconds of it and I liked it. If I choose to download it, it will be the first hip hop song ever on my iPod and iPad. And that's exactly what Apple, Zinio, and RollingStone are counting on.

Going through these 500 songs will be a journey of discovery for many of us. If you are like me, you missed some of the songs of the 80s and 90s. By that time I had ventured into Jazz and other venues. But I am open to all kinds of music. So if I find something I like in this journey, I'll probably buy it from the iTunes store, which is conveniently linked to the app. You do have to re-sign in to the iTunes store to purchase the songs, but actually, it's genius. Once again Apple has found a way to part me from my money! I'd definitely like to know how many songs were processed through the iTunes store from people who bought the RollingStone magazine. I'll bet it's impressive!

Download those Magazines Boomers!

2010-08-06T21:39:00.000-04:00

If you have an iPad, you may want to download some of the newest e-magazines that were designed just for this platform. Or you can get replicas of current magazines and read them in the iPad's format. Since the iPad is a beautiful venue for looking at pictures, magazine art stands out on the device.

Prior to a recent trip to the West Coast I loaded my iPad with a few e-magazines to see how I would enjoy them. Well, I did enjoy them, but I was unable to enjoy most of them on the airplane! Almost every e-magazine I tried had a downloadable or interactive component. That means that the same thing that keeps these magazines interesting, keeps people from reading them on an airplane where you can't turn on your cellular service during flight! I learned a real world lesson about how e-magazines work on today's iPad.

As I said in a recent post, I do have a beef with Apple. Magazines need a category of their own in the App store. Not all of the magazines available come up if you plug in the keyword "Magazine" into the search engine. I understand that Apple and magazine publishers are feuding about subscriptions on the iPad. Magazine publishers want to offer them, but Apple just wants people to download each individual issue and pay the price. Maybe that's why Apple is being so user "unfriendly" about magazines on its site.

Anyway, I did manage to download some of the magazines now available and I also downloaded magazines from two what I call "gateway apps": Magcloud and Zinio. Magcloud and Zinio are magazine stands of sorts, and let you download issues, most for a price, although a number of beautiful magazines like some Life Magazine titles are free.

In a very interesting move, Rolling Stone just put out a $9.99 special issue through Zinio on the iPad that includes articles, but also plays 30 seconds of each and every of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time." You can also download the complete songs, for a price, if there is something you want to play on your iPad. I plan to download the magazine, and report back to you next time on how I liked it. Of course, this is a very clever, yet entertaining, way to part people from their money, since once you hear 30 seconds of those songs, you are probably going to buy them if you don't have them.

That being said, some magazine publishers have gone their own way and are issuing individual apps for the iPad. Here is an example of the app for the sample issue of Sports Illustrated and a screen shot of two of its pages, including one that tells you how to navigate through the app. I've also pasted a screen shot from the cover of the Vanity Fair app.

When I was reading through reviews at the app store, some subscribers to Glamour's free iPad app were disappointed that once they downloaded the app, they had to pay for the actual e-magazine. And some subscribers to the print version were upset they they were being asked to pay twice for the same information.

If you do decide to give downloading magazines a try, let me know what you think both about the e-magazines you've read and what you think about the issues brought up by reviewers. If you have a subscription to the print magazine, should you have to pay for the iPad version?

My iPad: Essential, No; Fun, Yes, but Also Frustrating!

2010-07-20T10:16:00.002-04:00

Since I got my iPad several weeks ago, I've been using it around the house a bit. Although I still find myself wedded to the computer in my office for most of my tasks, I keep the iPad in my bedroom upstairs near the TV. It has eliminated the need for a laptop up there, and now during commercials, I usually delete my junk email, do a couple of word games, and catch up on the New York Times and Washington Post articles I haven't read during the day.

I also downloaded my first book on the device from the Apple store, and since I have the Kindle application on the iPad I plan to put several more books from Amazon on the device. My family and I are planning a vacation and I want to have a lot of books on the iPad to take with me, plus several print books to pass around. Someone can read a book on my iPad, while I read a print book, and vise versa. I'm hoping it will work out nicely, reducing the weight of print books I take, but I'll report back to you.

I've also been playing around with some of the apps I downloaded, particularly the Pages app. This is a word processing app that lets you create documents on the iPad and then email them to yourself or others. I know that hard core Apple users probably don't see anything remarkable in the Pages for iPad app, but I am certainly enjoying the creative aspects this app inspires. I've been "fooling around" with making posters from my photo library using some of the templates, and they've been highly amusing, at least to me.

So here's the thing. The iPad makes me feel more creative, but I keep running into the device's limitations. I want to do more with it. For example, the iPad provides a more intimate photo viewing experience. I love looking at my photos on it, but when I find one that belongs in the trash, there's no way for me to delete it. I want that option! I need a trash can in that photo app that then syncs back to my computer and iPhone and zaps those unwanted pictures for good. No doubt I'll have that option in upcoming versions, but for now, it's a bit frustrating.

I also downloaded a few of the magazines that were created just for the iPad, and have found them interesting to page through and read. I want more! And yes, I know they are pricey. I want the iPad version of all of my favorite magazines, but it's not happening fast enough.

And if any of you magazine publishing types are reading this, I'd like to see a comprehensive magazine stand category in the App Store. Am I missing something? Is there such a thing? I want to browse through all the magazine apps just like I do when I'm at the newsstand at Barnes & Noble or at the airport. Why do I have to look in sports for Sports Illustrated and Entertainment for Vanity Fair? I have to know what I want to buy to find these magazines. Frankly, if I had my druthers I'd load up that iPad with so many magazines, I don't have time to read them, and then just take the iPad out and thumb through them when I'm on a plane. It would be fun to go through the new advertising models and follow links. (Well, I guess you can't follow the links on the plane because you are in airplane mode.) Anyway, I hope more magazines come out before my vacation.

[Just after I published the above paragraph--thanks to Precision Media's Bob Sacks -- I learned of a free app for the iPad called MagCloud, that will allow me to download magazines onto my iPad. I will download it and report back.]

A Look at the Computing Guide for Boomers from Microsoft

2010-07-05T15:30:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Lori Orlov for noting that Microsoft has updated its Computing Guide, changing the name from Guide for Aging Computer Users to Computing Guide for Boomers.

This definitely sounds less condescending, and I'm thinking that maybe this isn't just a cosmetic change, but perhaps its a change in attitude by Microsoft. While many of us Boomers are hooked on Apple products, many of us choose PCs too. After all, if you compare Apple to PC, PC always wins out on price.

Anyway, the first article in the Computing Guide addresses a problem that many Boomers don't want to discuss. "By the time we reach our fifties, two-thirds of us have vision, hearing or dexterity impariments that will impact our computer use." I know you don't want to be told this, but it's true, and someone has to address it.

Go to the link associated with that statement, however, and you get a long, involved article. Heck, Microsoft, if I'm having problems, get me to the right article, right away. So without more ado: Here is the direct link for the the article about making the items on your PC easier to see: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/magnify.aspx.

Keep in mind that many of these tips work for Microsoft Vista and Windows 7 operating systems. Unfortunately those of us with older operating systems will have to make do. I tried changing the resolution on my Windows ME-based machine, and, while not difficult to do, frankly, it looked terrible. There was only one option. The newer operating systems have many more options from which to choose.

Microsoft points out that you can make the text and other items such as your icons, folders and mouse pointer larger. If you do this, however, some things won't fit on the screen. They say you can decrease the size of the text and use the built in Magnifyer to see the text as you type. A video here demonstrates how you can do this.

If you just want to make the desktop icons larger and easier to see, right click the desktop, point to View, and then click Large Icons, Medium Icons, or Classic Icons. (Classic icons are the smallest size.) .Did you know that you can also use your mouse to increase the size of your icons? Just keep holding down the Ctrl key while you scroll over the icons with your mouse.

You can also increase your screen resolution to see sharper images. A video that shows you how to do this can be found here. Microsoft says these are the steps you should follow to do this, but remember, you may find that some items "fall off" your screen when you implement this change. You can always change it back if this doesn't work for you.

Open Screen Resolution by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, and then, under Appearance and Personalization, clicking Adjust screen resolution.
Click the drop-down list next to Resolution, move the slider to the resolution you want, and then click Apply
Click Keep to use the new resolution, or click Revert to go back to the previous resolution.

I'll take a look at some of the other areas in the Computing Guide for Boomers in upcoming blog posts. In the meantime, I'm looking into iPad apps and am finding myself overwhelmed. If I can't figure out which ones are good for Boomers, how can I tell you about them? More on this next time.

New Layout and New Background For Blog

2010-06-27T17:39:00.000-04:00

Hello to my readers:
I recently experimented with a new background and new template for my blog. Let me know how you like it! I hope it makes reading my blog a more enjoyable experience.
Let me know. And thanks for reading Tech and the Baby Boomer.

Esther Surden

Updating to iPhone OS4---It's Really Not that Intuitive, Boomers

2010-06-25T17:16:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting regularly, but life has a way of getting in the way. And sometimes, even the gadgets you rely on to simplify your life, seem to be complicating it.

So it was for me this week, when Apple announced its upgrade to the OS4, and I couldn't even figure out how to download the operating system onto my phone. My original iPhone was a 3GS, and I expected that when I synced to iTunes I would get a message telling me about the new OS and that I should upgrade my phone. Well that didn't happen.

When I complained to family about not being able to find the upgrade on the Apple site, my son took over and actually upgraded my phone for me, before I had a chance to look at all the steps it took. I made him show me what he did so I could blog about it.

Of course I found out that all you have to do is connect your device to iTunes, sync it, click on the little icon of the iPhone that appears under "Devices", and it will say "Check for Updates."

After you click, it will give you options to update your phone. My question for Apple is, why isn't this automatic? Shouldn't they notify you when an update is available? All my other programs do. Maybe there is something I'm missing here, like a setting I'm not seeing to set it to notify me right away when an update is available. Or maybe there is a reason some people don't want to automatically upgrade to a new operating system when it comes out. Too many bugs, perhaps?

Anyway, once I updated the phone, I began exploring some of the new capabilities, and frankly, they just didn't seem so revolutionary to me. Yes, I got some spiffy new backgrounds for my phone. And I learned that if you double click on the home button you can keep some apps running while you go to another app. I can keep my mail open while I play a game, for example. That's good, and saves some steps. But is it revolutionary? Not really.

One thing I did like was that I was able to organize all my apps in folders, which significantly reduced the number of pages I have to deal with on my phone screen. All my social apps such as Facebook and Twitter are in a folder, as are all my music apps.

My son moved some of the apps together right on the phone screen, but when I tried to do this myself, I couldn't do it. However, following a tip from an EONs member, I decided to go into Apple iTunes, connect my iPhone, click on my iPhone icon which is under the Devices section, and click the tab called Apps. Then I was able to use my mouse to drag the apps icons to consolidate apps into appropriate folders. Now I have two pages of icons rather than three, and am happy with the results.

This is how iTunes Help tells you how to do it:

I have to tell you that doing this wasn't intuitive or as easy as I expected from Apple. However, now that I've done it once, it seems easy in retrospect. At least, since Apple does things consistently, I'll know how to change my new iPad when the operating system update to that comes along in the fall.

My son, who has been helping me figure these things out, says he can't relate to my difficulties, and he is laughing at me a little today as he reads this post. But I'm guessing the rest of you can relate to me, right?

Ever Hear of Location-based Services, Boomers? How about Foursquare?

2010-06-15T21:38:00.000-04:00

Recently I read a post by a marketer who believes that Boomers increasingly will be using location-based services. In case you don't know what these are, I'll try my best to explain. Your cell phone probably has GPS in it, the same kind of GPS that gives you directions in the car. With many cell phones, especially smart phones, you can download geolocation apps such as Foursquare. Foursquare lets you "check in" when you are at a particular location, such as a concert, or even a department store or Starbucks. "Checking in" means letting all of your contacts know where you are at that particular moment, and also letting the establishment know that you are there.

When I first heard about this, I thought, why would anyone want to let people know where they are? That's fine for kids who have time to hang out together and want to find their friends, but why would I do it? Well apparently, according to blogger Anne Mai Bertelsen, president of MAI Strategies, Boomers, me included, are going to want to do this for many reasons.

First of all, I'll be able to keep track of all the places I've been. Ever wonder what the name of that great restaurant you went to in San Francisco was? Or where you saw that piece of jewelry you just couldn't decide whether you wanted or not? If you "check in" at the places you go you'll be able to track that information. You'll have a memory jogger, something Boomers can surely use.

Also, I'll be rewarded when I "check in" frequently at one place. So my 5th trip to Starbucks or my 3rd trip to an expensive restaurant will reap some kind of recognition. Perhaps a dollar off a Frappuccino will be in my future, Bertelson says. Or maybe I'll get a free desert at the restaurant.

One of the geo-location apps -- Loopt --that can be downloaded onto a smart phone is a sort of virtual loyalty program. I use my loyalty card to get discounts at the Shoprite near my home. Why wouldn't I want to use a virtual loyalty program? Discounts, without having to clip coupons, are something Boomers can easily understand. Below you'll see what the Loopt iPhone app looks like.

Bertelson says that one of the reasons she uses the services is that her friends use it. When they go to a restaurant they post what they liked eating there, for example. I suppose they also will post what to avoid. Then when she goes to that same restaurant and checks in, she finds recommendations from her own friends. That's kind of cool.

A working woman, Betelson says she is also able to use the services to find colleagues at conferences. Occasionally, she's even been able to locate relatives who happen to be in the same place she is at the same time. Here's how it would work. You are visiting a crowded craft fair and unbeknown to you Cousin Mary is wandering around the same craft fair. Odds are you won't meet. However, if you've both "checked in" to the craft fair, you'll know that Mary is there, and you'll be able to contact her and find her.

There are lots of other location based apps for the iPhone, for Twitter and even for Facebook. Some other prominent new services include Gowalla, Where, BriteKite, MyTown, PegShot. They are catching on in popularity and my bet is that in another year or so, many Boomers who have never heard of these services will be using them with abandon, just as they use Facebook.

Just remember, if you do decide to experiment with location services, protect your privacy. Make sure that only friends you know can find you. Conversely, please be careful about letting everyone and anyone know that no one is at home.

Some sites are already exploiting the negative side of geo-location. According to DYP Advisors, these services can let bad people know you are not home. "A website called Please Rob Me links Twitter updates of people who say they are not home to locations using Google Maps," a blog post on the DYP Advisors Inc.web site says. The DYP blog also says if you use geolocation services you might be in for higher home insurance premiums. When you visit Please Rob Me it really only demonstrates the possibility of using location-based services this way. Nevertheless, it's a scary thought how these services could be misused, and like anything else on the Internet, protect yourselves.

To see Anne Mai Bertelsen's complete post called "I Get Around" go to Engage Boomers at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=130044

Who knew the iPad Doesn't Automatically Sync Calendars?

2010-06-06T11:59:00.000-04:00

I got my new iPad this week! I know, I know, I said on this site I wouldn't get one until the price came down and it weighed less. ( Why I didn't Pre-Order the iPad) But my adult kids and my husband decided to get me one for my birthday and Mother's Day, and, how could I say no? Besides, I told myself, I'll get to write about it on my blog.

The device is amazing, but I haven't had a chance to try everything out on it. I've been busy with school, working and life, and haven't been in the consuming media frame of mind. However, the very first thing I did with the iPad was download all of my pictures to it. There can't be a better photo viewing experience available than this device. Every picture looks breathtaking.

I'll tell you another thing I love about it. I carry it around to the couch, to my bedroom, everywhere I go inside my house. The iPad makes computing just that much more accessible! Its hard to explain how much better an experience this is than my iPhone. My iPhone is amazing, but there are certain websites that just can't be read easily on the tiny screen. The iPad's screen size is just right and, yes, Steve Jobs, the device is almost magical.

So have I found anything I don't like so far? Of course. When I first plugged in the iPad to my computer to sync it, it didn't automatically sync my calendar. For those of you who don't know what syncing is, it is short for synchronizing, so that all the calendars, emails etc. on one device are up to date and the same as those on another. What's with that, Steve Jobs? I was told I could buy something called MobileMe for $99/year that would keep all of my calendars, email accounts, and contacts in sync for all my devices. Frankly, Boomers, this is a feature that should be free. The family paid enough for this device! We live in the 21st century now, and syncing should be included in any device that purports to be "easy to use."

Anyway, with the help of my son, we found the online instructions for syncing a calendar, notes and contacts to the iPad. It's really simple and the calendar etc. syncs every time you connect your iPad to the computer. I'll present the steps below, in case anyone else runs into this problem.

1. Plug your iPad into the USB port in your computer

2. When the iTunes screen appears on your computer, go to the Devices icon

3. Click on the Devices icon

4. A series of tabs will appear

5. Click on the tab that says "Info"

6. Scroll down to the Sync Calendars area and click on the box

7. Take a look at the other options. You can sync your contacts and notes as well.

I hope this helps other Boomers set up their iPads. Can anyone think of a reason why this wouldn't be an automatic part of iPad setup? We are coming closer to devices that are as easy to use as the TV used to be, but not quite.

You'll be Surprised what Facebook and Others Know About You, Boomers

2010-05-29T14:21:00.000-04:00

As you know I've written about privacy a few times in this blog. I really think you have to keep on top of the privacy settings in social network sites. But it is abundantly clear that sites are collecting lots of information that we don't really know about.

While much of that information is harmless, some can be used to attack you. And I'm not talking about kids who post pictures of drunken parties on the web and expect that their job hunt will go well. I'm talking about you, Boomers, as this Washington Post article makes clear.

To sum up the article, a woman's two relatives were hurt in an electrical explosion while conducting routine maintenance at Walmart. They sued the company. The defense went after the woman's online life. Through a subpoena seeking information about what was said about the men's injuries, Walmart's defense team got full access to her Facebook and MySpace accounts "every public and private message contact and photo for the last 2 1/2 years."

The Washington Post article says that many online sites are building dossiers about their users, and while some are making the information anonymous, others are not. Some retain detailed data for a year, others for a month. The amount of access to that data is increasing, as attorneys use subpoenas to get access to the data for divorce and other suits.

Here's the key thing to remember. If a lawyer wants to access your laptop, he or she needs a warrant, and that's hard to get. If he or she wants access to your online life, all that is needed is a subpoena, which is easy to get. Google keeps track of search queries from a particular IP address; XBox users: Microsoft knows what game you played and how long you played it.

Facebook keeps a record of the IP address used to access your account, the date and time you went on and exactly what you did. Facebook now knows that I am addicted to their Zynga Scramble game!

With all that in mind, I urge you to check your Facebook privacy settings yet one more time. Facebook actually changed the privacy settings to make them simpler to use. All you have to do now is go to Facebook and go to the Account tab in the upper right corner. You'll see a pull down menu that has a Privacy tab. Hit it.

The photo below tells you what Facebook recommends for your privacy settings.

I say don't do it. Change them. Be more careful who you open up your life to. And even while you use Facebook, remember that every snarky comment you make could be held against you.

Cooking Allergy Free--An App for That

2010-05-23T14:34:00.000-04:00

A couple of years ago I joined a group of women who play Mahjong. We meet every week, and someone cooks dinner. We eat and laugh, and then we play. We decided to cook dinner because everyone was eating too many snacks during the course of the night, and we wanted to be healthy.

However, after two years, cooking dinner is a bit of a challenge. Some members of our group don't like certain food items like soup or even Brussel sprouts. Everyone is on a diet at one time or another and can't have carbs, fat, sugar, or something else! And others have food allergies. I think that food allergies, sensitivities, and auto-immune diseases like Celiac, have become more prominent in our Boomer generation. They are more easily diagnosed, so more people know they have them.

A recent entry to the iPhone App family called "Cook it, Allergy Free" was developed by Kim Maes, who is getting her masters degree in nutrition. Kim wanted to help people who want to cook taking allergies into consideration. I like this app. The recipes look good and easy to follow and the amount of information given is amazing. Unlike many of the apps I've reviewed here, this one isn't free. It costs $4.99. If I make a number of the recipes and it helps me deal with the food allergy problems of my friends, then it will definitely be worth it.

When you first open the app you are greeted by a list of food types: Appetizers, Breads, Breakfast, Vegetables, Main dishes etc.

I decided to tap the Main Dishes tab, and I found that further broken down to Chicken, Beef, Pork and Seafood. Since chicken is a dish everyone will eat, I took a look at the chicken dishes.

The first one was Apricot Chicken with Almonds, which looked like a good prospect.

But what was I going to do about those pesky Almonds? One of my group can't eat them. Should I leave them out? Well, this app provides a great list of items that can be substituted for almonds in this recipe. I'll pick one of those.

The app also has a way to create a grocery list for the ingredients, and can place the list by grocery isle, making picking up the ingredients easy. I don't know about you, but after all these years of grocery shopping for my family, I'm getting tired of it. Anything that makes it easier is appreciated.

If I were to have one criticism of this app is that I wish the nutritional information had been included. I'd like to know how many calories are in a serving, how much fat etc. Someone in my group is always on a diet and would like to know. However, in general, I'd say this is a good way to find new recipes and still accommodate dietary difficulties. I'm glad to have it and I thank the developers. For more information and additional recipes, check out the blog and website at Cook It Allergy Free.

There is a New Web Site for Boomers

2010-05-12T20:03:00.002-04:00

It seems that Boomers are getting a little respect now --at least for our buying power. Procter &Gamble and NBC just launched a group of web sites aimed at us called Life Goes Strong at http://www.lifegoesstrong.com. Boomers seem to have $1 trillion to spend, so P&G and NBC thought these sites would be a good bet.

One of these web sites, called Tech Goes Strong, might put this blog out of business.

The site has articles about technology aimed at baby boomers. So far there are only a few articles up on the site, but I urge you to take a look at it. It's a bit different from my take on things, but interesting nonetheless.

In one of the articles, author Erin Joyce gives Boomers some tips about starting out in Facebook. She quotes an expert as saying Boomers tend to be lurkers, who consume their media more than they engage. They read blog posts, listen to Podcasts and watch videos.

However, some Boomers jump in to social media with both feet and share too much. Facebook isn't a place to put up all those old jokes you used to pass around via email. It's more of a place to share what you are doing these days, something that is catching your fancy, or how you are feeling at a particular moment in time. It's also a place for people to interact with you and for you to interact with people.

So if someone posts, "I got a clean bill of health at the doctor." You can post that you "like" this revelation, comment with a wish for continued good health, or continue the conversation with something relevant to your health. This is a way people keep in touch with each other on Facebook.

You might want to post a favorite quote that gets you through the day, or something you recently read that surprised you. These kinds of posts get online conversations flowing.

One of the experts quoted in the article advises new users not to worry about how many followers they have or their level of popularity. I had to laugh when I read that. I don't know any Boomers who go to Facebook to collect new friends. They all are there to connect with old friends and acquaintances or far flung relatives. If you know someone who uses Facebook as a way to enhance their popularity in this way, let me know, will you?

Another of the experts quoted in this article points out that you can control the level of privacy on Facebook. For myself, I've decided that Facebook is the place where I play, and LinkedIn is my professional network. Therefore, I control my privacy settings on Facebook, vigilantly. I interact with friends and family there and really don't want anyone else on that page, so I ignore friend requests from colleagues or suggest we link on LinkedIn. However, I'm always careful about what I say and consider Facebook semi public.

Which brings me to another piece of advice in the article. Everything you do online is public and getting more so each day. If you haven't carefully adjusted your privacy settings, you may find something you post on your "wall" found via a search engine. So think before you post.

This was not in the article: Some people I know don't think the lack of privacy is worth the benefits of being on Facebook. I'm not one of them. However, if you ever want to leave, you may run into some trouble Officially Facebook says you must "deactivate" your account, not delete it. However all those pictures you posted and conversations stay online. Plus, Facebook gives you a guilt trip on the way out, saying things like "Esther Surden will miss you."

So if you ever want to sever your ties with the social networking site permanently and without the guilt trip, take a look at this Facebook page. It will tell you how to permanently delete your account.

How does that iPhone App Open that Trunk?

2010-05-02T13:52:00.001-04:00

I was watching a little TV one day when an ad came on for the Apple iPhone. If you've been reading this blog, you know I love my iPhone and like to search out new and useful apps. The one app that caught my eye this week was in the commercial called "Family Man". You can see the commercial I'm talking about here. Clearly, it shows a man, using his iPhone, to open the trunk of his car. Well, my question was "how did he do that?"

The key to this action is an app called Viper developed by a company called Directed, which does a lot of things: start your car, open your trunk, lock and unlock your car etc. Very cool, right?

However, all the stars have to be aligned correctly. First, you need a car that is "compatible" with the device. Then you have to buy a hardware device for $299 from Best Buy and install it in your car. (Installation is another charge. On the Apple Web Site, a reviewer said it cost him $199 to get the device installed.) If you don't have a compatible car, you can get the functionality through a "complete smart start system," which costs in the neighborhood of $500.

After you've chosen which device you need, you can use the "free" Viper SmartStart App to unlock your car, start it remotely on cold days, trigger the panic alarm etc. Oh, yes, after the first year there is a yearly charge of $29.99 for the privilege of using a 3G network to pop the trunk on your car.

Is it worth it? You'll have to decide. You can activate the system from anywhere, so I can imagine that people who travel often and worry they didn't lock the car might go for it. There is a security advantage. If someone steals your car, you can activate a "kill switch" and as soon as they hit the breaks, the car shuts off. You also have to realize that this app is only as good as the network. AT&T has some problems in some areas, and it might not be worthwhile to install this app where you know the network gets overloaded and drops calls.

The bottom line, Boomers. Viper is cool, for sure, but also pricey. The company says it also has modules that are compatible with Blackberries. I'm holding off on this one. It's just not worth it to me.

Viper has a good demo of its system at this website.

Check out the EONs iPad Discussion Board, Boomers

2010-04-25T13:18:00.000-04:00

I've been hanging out a little with the good folks at the iPad discussion board on EONs, a social networking site aimed at Boomers.

This is a Boomer to Boomer site, so don't expect to find your kids or any member of the younger generation crowding around this social networking water cooler. What you get are some good, solid people who are trying out this new device just like you and me. They're smart and most of them are not techies. It's great to watch them as they handle this new toy.

The discussion board has a couple of more knowledgeable members who give technical answers when needed. Overall, it is a great laboratory for how Boomers will use this device and what the potential problems are with it. I recommend everyone go to the website and give it a read. You do have to join EONs first, but if you are interested in the pros and cons of the iPad for people our age, I definitely think you should do it.

The Boomers at EONs do a great deal with the iPad. They read books on the device, but they also are trying out all of the free apps that are available for it. One of these just happens to be for a comic book company, and users can download free comic books. One member of the group (for privacy purposes I won't name user names) finds comic books "better than on paper." He calls the graphics on the iPad screen "out of this world." That's something people really ought to know.

Streaming and viewing movies and video is also a favorite activity reported by discussion group members. Working with a screen that is only 10 inches from your face, makes movies really come alive, they report. It's a personal, intimate, experience. Movies are downloaded through Netflix, and videos through a number of apps including YouTube. A couple of people on the board figured out how to make the iPad work with their TV without much fuss, so now they can stream movies, videos etc from the iPad onto the TV.

People here are very generous with their advice. They give lists of the best apps they've found. One of the ones mentioned is Stumbleupon, (www.stumbleupon.com) an app I've been meaning to discuss on this board. You can use Stumbleupon on your computer, smart phone or iPad and it does the same thing.

You select topics that are of interest to you and start stumbling though the web. My "Stumbles" have brought me to the website of the guy who does all those great chalk drawings and to pictures from someone who does unbelievable sand sculptures.

What you'll find depends on what topics you enter. This is a really fun way to surf the web and find things you never knew about.

Some of the Eons group have run into problems with their iPad: games that stall or are hard to make work after hours of playing; apps that let you download material but don't let you delete it; apps that don't look right on the iPad, clearly just brought over to the new platform directly from the iPhone; a keyboard that is clumsy to use. They've run into the device's limitations in real world scenarios. But for the most part they are an extremely enthusiastic bunch who don't believe that this will be a device that will end up on the trash heap.

Browsers and Searching --Some tools

2010-04-18T14:22:00.000-04:00

A couple of my friends thought I should write about some tools they found that can help make Boomer's browsing and searching lives easier.

The first one is Opera Mini for the iPhone which was introduced this week. The iPhone comes pre-loaded with the Safari web browser from Apple, and Safari is a good web browser. So why would you need another? If you haven't noticed, web browsing on an iPhone can be a painful experience, especially when there is a lot of network traffic---a frequent occurrence in many cities. It takes a while to get a good signal if you aren't at a Wi-Fi hotspot. Then you have to wait for pages to load. That's why apps are so appealing. They load and get you the information you want without waiting.

Some browsers work better than others. Opera Mini is optimized for the mobile web but it isn't iPhone optimized. Safari renders web pages that have been optimized for the iPhone better. However, Opera loads web pages really fast, faster than the Safari browser that comes with the iPhone. It especially loads pages from sites you've already visited much faster. I gave the Opera Mini a try out this weekend and I was generally impressed. It worked admirably. If you live in a place where there is a lot of web congestion, I suggest giving the Opera Mini a try. It's free at the App store.

Another interesting site brought to my attention was Good50.com powered by Google Search. It's just a search box, but one designed to be easy to use. The young people behind Good50.com were trying to design something to make searching on the Internet more user friendly for their grandfather. The developer-- who just happens to be a 16 year old -- says:

Designed with the public's health in mind, Good50 has pre-set the search box to a larger size and gives the option to adjust to a larger font in the search results. These features of Good50 will reduce eye strain and help to prevent Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS). Some possible symptoms of CVS include headaches, dry and/or red eyes, fatigue, double vision, and neck or back pain.

They've also developed a version for people who have trouble with low vision:

We have a high contrast version for people with low vision. This option can also help save energy on a CRT monitor as a black background takes less energy to display than a white one. So, why not Go Green!

The twist with Go50.com is that for every 50 searches, the company donates 5 cents to good causes. The money goes to a different charity each month. Last month Good50 donated to the Red Cross for Haiti Earthquake Relief; this month the money is going to Meals on Wheels.

Health Info on the Web--Where do Boomers Begin?

2010-04-10T15:27:00.003-04:00

I really bit off more than I could chew when I started this blog topic. There are so many sources of health information on the Web that it's no wonder it is confusing. Where do you go for your information? I hope you'll comment and tell me. Perhaps there are better sites, geared to people of our age group, to look at for medical information.

We are hitting the time of life when health information is crucial. Sure we go to our doctors, but we also want to look up answers for ourselves. Is our doctor being conservative or aggressive in the treatment of our problem? Which specialty should I go to -- is it the orthopedist, the podiatrist, physical therapist or the chiropractor who can best treat my problem? When do you go to the allergist and when to the ear nose and throat doctor? What kind of doctor actually treats this problem? Do I really need to visit my primary physician before I choose a specialist to handle this issue?

I decided to take a look at some "Best of" sites to see if they could help me. One of the list sites that seemed to aggregate all of the health sites with good reputations together was called Medical Net Top 20, which says it is an independent site that looks at web sites and rates them.

First on its list is WebMD, a website many of you may already turn to for help with your medical issues.

I have to say that WebMD is my favorite place to start for a medical search. It is a well monitored site with a medical review board that makes sure its stories are honest. It also has a symptom checker. So if you are experiencing some symptoms, you can search for them and get a range of ideas about what the problem could be. The bottom line, however, is that you will be told to consult a doctor, no matter what! Web MD has some content tailored for Boomers. One, on the home page today, asks if Boomers will outlive their children...not a pleasant thought.

HealthCentral.com differs from WebMD in some ways. It brings together health information from a lot of different sites and also talks about medical research that is going on. I have two problems with HealthCentral.com. First is the authenticity of the site. The information may be very accurate but it's difficult to find out who is making sure that only vetted information appears. Second is the way it is organized. HealthCentral really is the starting point for some 35 micro sites that discuss different diseases. If you fall into their categories, that's great. However, I think it makes it difficult for the average Boomer to figure out, is it heart disease or is it indigestion? This is just my opinion. Go to the sight, take a look, and form your own. On the good side there are really informative articles on this site. Two that may be of interest to Boomer women include "Good versus Bad Pain: How to Protect Yourself in Yoga Class" and "Heart Attack Symptoms in Women"

In upcoming blog posts, I'll continue with my reviews of some of the health care sites and also look at some phone applications for iPhone and Google phones that deal with health. In the mean time, stay healthy!

Why I didn't pre-order the iPad

2010-04-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

You would think that as a boomer trying out new technologies, I would have been an early adopter of the iPad. I've written about this device prior to its availability last weekend and for the most part I've been impressed with all it can do. I reiterate that this is a slate device meant for the rest of us---the non-techies in the world. And I think I would like it. Techies should note: this is a consumer device, and consumers will be judging it. If it answers the question "does it enhance my life or make my life easier?" it will gain traction.

All that being said, I think it's just too expensive right now. In a year, when Apple lowers the price as it has on the iPhone and on the iPod in their time, I will jump on the bandwagon and buy the iPad. And I would guess that a LOT of Boomers will jump on the bandwagon along with me. Even so analysts are suggesting that Apple could sell 5 million of these devices this year at the higher prices.

By the time Apple lowers prices, initial demand will have softened. All the reviews will be out. I'll know if it's really too heavy for happy magazine and book reading. Yes, a lot of us have shoulder and carpal tunnel problems and don't want to hold something in our hands that weighs the 1.5 lbs (iPad) compared to the 10 ounces or so of the Kindle. Also, I'm sure that the device will slim down some by the time the next version comes around. When the iPod first came out it was heavy, compared to today's versions.

I'll know if I really need to spend money for a 3G connection for the device, or if a WiFi connection is good enough for me. I'll have figured out if the virtual keyboard is sufficient for sending out the occasional email or typing in a website address. And Apple will have either provided a USB port and a camera or not, and I'll know if I think this is a deal breaker for the device.

By the time I get to mine, Apple will have time to iron out all the kinks. Some industry observers say there are some problems with charging the battery in the initial version, especially if you have an older computer. You know we Boomers hold on to our computers far longer than the techie types do, so that would concern me.

When I get my iPad, I'll know that many of the applications written for the slate, work on it, and that they will delight me or not. I'll know if the vibrant color touch screen really makes a difference, or if reading on the iPad will be harder on the eyes than reading on the Kindle's E Ink. Now some reviewers are saying that some applications are grainy or don't take advantage of the iPad's unique features. I'm sure that will change over time.

Of course, the fact that I've made a practical choice doesn't prevent me from wanting this device. So stay tuned, Boomers, because I'm heading over to the Apple store this afternoon. I'm going to stand there and try the iPad out and hope there isn't too long of a line to do the same thing.

LinkedIn --A Useful Tool for Boomers who Want to Find Jobs

2010-03-29T16:47:00.003-04:00

I'm sure you've heard about LinkedIn, the professional social network and maybe you've heard of a newer network called Naymz.

Both of these are professional networks that aim to connect their users with colleagues.

For this blog entry about job hunting, I am going to concentrate on LinkedIn. It seems to give the job hunter more free features and has more users than Naymz, but I wanted you to be aware of Naymz as well.

LinkedIn is a network Boomers can use for professional development, to bounce ideas off of people in their field, to catch up with colleagues who graduated with the same degree as the they have and to ask experts questions about marketing, advertising, best business practices, etc. So far so good. A lot of LinkedIn's features are free, but you have to purchase "advanced" features.

These networks are excellent sources of jobs, if you use them right. I came across a couple of good blog posts on this topic, but the ones I liked the best were called How to Change the World: Ten Ways to use Linked In to Find a Job by Guy Kawasaki and How to Use Linked In to Find a Job by Dave Taylor. I highly recommend you read the entire posts for tips on how to leverage Linked-In successfully.

The first thing you have to do on any of these sites, is take the time to create your profile. A blog post by Dave Taylor suggests that the profile is important because it makes you more "findable" by your colleagues and potential employees. Be sure to include any nick names or pre-marriage names (if you've changed your name) in your profile to enhance your ability to be found. Also:

When you initiate communication with someone else, the first thing they'll do is go and check out your profile. Even if your profile isn't that great, the fact that you've spent the time trying to make it comprehensive will tell them that you're serious, that you respect their time and attention, and that you want to use LinkedIn to its fullest capacity.

Once you've created your profile putting your best foot forward, it's time for some serious networking.I have a confession to make. I'm good at writing, and not so good at networking. When I joined LinkedIn a couple of years ago, I was timid about asking people to join my network. That was my first mistake. If you want to find a job, you have to overcome any shyness you may have, even online. Connect with anyone you may have known in a professional capacity throughout your career. Then throw in people you may know who are "thought leaders" in your field. Make sure you've had a personal connection with them, however. Maybe you've taken their classes or spoken to them at a few conferences. Don't forget clients and vendors.Also connect outside your career path. Remember that your cousin who may be in a totally different field from you knows people!

Join whatever groups are on LinkedIn that relate to your career, your special interests,your college, your frat or sorority, your grad school, even your church or synagogue.After you've joined groups, start commenting and contributing to them. Answer questions in the ask the expert section. Discuss interesting topics in your field; make your presence known.

In his post---aside from the standard advice about updating your status to let people know that you are job hunting--- Guy Kawasaki has some advice unique to job hunters who want to use LinkedIn.

Get LinkedIn recommendations from your colleagues. A strong recommendation from your manager highlights your strengths and shows that you were a valued employee. This is especially helpful if you were recently laid off.

Find out where people with your backgrounds are working. Find companies that employ people like you by doing an advanced search for people in your area who have your skills. For example, if you’re a web developer in Seattle, search profiles in your zip code using keywords with your skills (for example, JavaScript, XHTML, Ruby on Rails) to see which companies employ people like you.

LinkedIn also has ways for you to investigate where people at certain companies come from and go to, to help you widen your search for good places to work. And you can use the service to check to see if companies are still hiring. If you have a company in mind, you can even use LinkedIn to find people who are willing to walk your resume to the hiring manager, giving it a personal cache, Guy says.

The key to networking (or “schmoozing”), however, is filled with counter-intuitiveness. First, it’s not who you know—it’s who knows of you. Second, Great schmoozers are not thinking “What can this person do for me?” To the contrary, they are thinking, “What can I do for this person?” For more on schmoozing, read “The Art of Schmoozing.”

In his blog post, Dave Taylor gives detailed instructions about how to find the people that your colleagues know. He points out that once you find someone you want to get to know, you can "Get Introduced" on LinkedIn by asking people who ARE linked to him to "Introduce" you. Taylor points out that if you are new to LinkedIn you might not be able to use the "Get Introduced" button. In this case you can try to use "In-Mail", which is LinkedIn's internal email system.

The message you send will determine whether or not the other person responds. It's like being at a party: if you go up to someone you find attractive and say something stupid, well, odds are you won't be successful in your attempt to connect. I strongly encourage you to be brief, polite, somehow weave in some overlap between their experience and your own ("Turns out we both went to Colorado Tech too. When did you graduate?"), and make it clear why you're contacting them. I'd also recommend something like "If you have the time, I'd like to suggest we meet for a cup of coffee too: I'm just getting into the job market here in the Springs and would like to hear more about your experiences too. I'm happy to buy!

Best of luck with your job searches, Boomers. I hope some of this helps. Here are some other resources with some great advice about using Linked-In to hunt for a job:

Best Practices for a linked in Job Search. http://www.askdavetaylor.com/what_are_best_practices_for_a_linkedin_job_search.html
Searching the hidden job market for opportunities http://www.cio.com/article/326363/Searching_the_Hidden_Job_Market_for_Opportunities

Boomer Technophiles should Teach Boomer Technophobes now

2010-03-26T13:58:00.000-04:00

This blog entry is a little different from most of the ones I've done on these pages. In most cases, I've been trying to help people adopt new technologies that may seem unclear to them or find a great application they may have overlooked. However, I came across Laurie Orloff's recent blog post called Technophiles Should Teach Technophobes Now and felt moved to discuss it. Laurie writes about aging in place, and older people using technology. She is a firm believer that technology enhances people's lives, no matter what the age, and that older people who don't know how to use the Internet are missing out. She especially worries about social isolation. She sees some hope in these news items she recently saw:

Three tiny news items -- three small steps for senior computer literacy. In New York, Microsoft and Self-Help have announced a virtual senior center -- a way that home-bound seniors can share in the activities of a local senior center through video conferencing. In Tuscaloosa, a public library has partnered with Generations Online to offer training in use of computers -- the library has the computers and software already, but is running out of funding to pay the Senior Aides who do the training. And in Rockville, Maryland, the Jewish Council on Aging is seeing a growing number of seniors sign up for computer training, fearful of being left out of connecting with their peers.

So how does all that relate to Boomers? If you know how to use the computer well enough to read my blog, you know enough to teach someone else how to use the Internet and work a smart phone, if they are willing! Laurie is worried that seniors are missing out on the sense of community that comes when they are increasingly isolated. I am worried that if Boomers don't keep up, they will be the ones isolated when they reach old age.

Laurie says that only 66% of middle Boomers seem to be working full time, and she speculates that some of that job loss might be because they are unfamiliar with technology. Not knowing technology can hamper you from finding a job if the employer only advertises online. Everyone these days has to be able to write using a word processor and surf the Internet at a minimum. Many jobs--even hands on jobs like social work and nursing--require updating of materials on the computer.

While I think much of what Laurie has to say in her article is spot on, I would like to broaden her approach. For every Boomer out there who is a slave to their Blackberry and loves Facebook and Linked-In, there's another who hasn't a clue. I know there are those who claim they don't want to have a life online. If you know someone like this, encourage them to give it a try and don't give up. In 20 years, when boomers reach a stage when they can no longer drive well or climb the subway stairs, who do you think will be the happier people? Technophobes or Technophiles?

"Tour Guide in Your Pocket?" Take a look at HearPlanet, Boomers

2010-03-18T12:46:00.000-04:00

Boomers who travel often want to save some money and I just ran across a great little application for the iPhone that will help you do that. It's an app called HearPlanet that replaces travel guides, and it was recommended in a list of best iPhone apps by National Geographic Adventure Magazine.

The other apps in this list are interesting, but National Geographic writer Steve Casimiro says this application is like "having a tour guide in your pocket." The app "tells you what attractions are nearby and then plays the Wikipedia description aloud." There is a free version and one priced at $4.99. Even if you splurge for the $4.99 version, it could save boomers a lot of money buying guide books at the various sites they visit.

The beauty of HearPlanet is that it uses geolocation technology. You don't have to type in where you are. You just press a button on the far left on the bottom of the Featured Places screen, and the application finds where you are and recommends places near you.

One reviewer in an AAA magazine said "The drive took us past Casa Grande, the site of ancient American Indian ruins. To learn about them, Janice searched HearPlanet ($4.99), a talking guidebook that uses your location to find Wikipedia articles about nearby sights. It gave us an instant overview of Casa Grande."

I downloaded the free version of HearPlanet, and I found it was an amazing tool. Here's what the app came up with around my house.

I live in a residential area of New Jersey, but I found an entry for the nearby commuter airport. The entry gave a detailed history of the airport and even mentioned that the airport gained notoriety when John F. Kennedy, Jr. took off from there on his ill-fated last flight.

The only problem with the Free version seems to be that it continuously asks you to upgrade to the complete version which has interactive maps.

Reviewers of the upgraded version are sometimes frustrated by the lack of a signal in the places they are visiting, but that is problem with the AT&T network and not the program. Still it would be better if you could download some of the info ahead of time, just in case the signal couldn't be found.

The free version doesn't recommend restaurants or tell you the best places to stay, so I'm sure one of the more traditional travel guides will still be required. Still this is a great little application that could help you discover new places to go and see.

Boomers, go ahead and Skype

2010-03-13T15:56:00.001-05:00

I just had a call from a friend of mine saying her adult child was spending six months abroad. I said, "You'll have to get Skype." Her response: "Have you written about it?" Of course, I hadn't yet written about Skype, so here is a short blog post on how to use Skype.

For those who don't know, Skype is a way to make free phone calls over the internet. You download a program, install it, get a headset so you can be heard clearly, and start Skyping. It's a little bit more complicated than that, but not much. The person on the other end of the Skype call also needs the software and the headset.

The headset consists of a microphone and earphones, both of which are needed for a clear call. Both of the parties to the call could use a camera on their computer. Many computers come with these included. If not, a cheap web cam will do, so you can make video calls. You'll need to figure out which ports the camera and Skype headset will go into in your computer. That can be the hardest part of all, especially for a novice or someone who has trouble getting down on the floor to see where these items go. OK, boomers, you know who you are!

Here's how to get started. First, go to www.Skype.com and download the program to your computer.

Go ahead and save the file.

After the file downloads, you'll have a Skype icon on your desktop or it may be in downloads file. This is the setup execution file. Run it and follow the setup wizard.

Once Skype has been installed you can search for Skype users.

When you find a user, you can make Skype calls to that user.

After installation has been completed, you'll find a Skype icon on your desktop. Click it and this is an example of what you'll see. (The icons on the window will tell you if that person is online or not.)

One of the easiest things ways to make Skype work for both parties is to preselect a time you both will be online. You can do this by sending the other person an email making arrangements to be online, or you can have a certain time each day or week that you'll be online and the other person knows it. Communications is really easy this way.

Skype offers a number of other ways to use its services. For a fee, you can call a land line phone in another country, for example. That way, you don't have to be at the computer at a set time. The website has a whole list of countries that can be called for either a low set per minute fee or a subscription fee.There are a lot of other options too.

I hope I've answered your Skype questions. Please let me know.

Boomers on the move: iTranslate a "universal translator"

2010-03-08T13:39:00.000-05:00

Here in the Northeast, it looks a little like spring, finally, after a very tough winter. That got me thinking that many boomers will be planning vacations in the next few months. Also, my kids are headed away on Spring Break. Is there anything on their iPhones that can help them?

In my search I found many iPhone apps that help travelers. One, however, that I found reminded me of Star Trek's Universal Translator. The Free app is called iTranslate by an Austrian developer called Sonico Mobile. To use iTranslate you have to be able to operate your phone and have access to the internet in the country you are visiting. So if you have an iPhone, you have to get an international plan with AT&T to use this app. And it won't work everywhere. AT&T doesn't have agreements with some carriers around the world. Still, it's very cool, and I can think of a lot of uses for it.

Several years ago our family went to Italy. After touring a wonderful art glass factory in Murano, an island near Venice, we wandered the small island and found ourselves off of the main "tourist" roads and walking in a heavily residential area. We were lost, knew no Italian, and the people we encountered knew no English. They wanted to help us, but we couldn't make ourselves understood. Finally, we were able to make someone understand what we wanted, and we found our way back to the glass factory and the water taxi that waited there.

It would have been wonderful to type what we wanted to say into our phones and have the written words come out on the other side, in Italian. Of course, it wouldn't have made much of a story.

Using iTranslate, the first thing you have to do is select the languages you want to translate from and to. This is an easy process. You press the button that says a language, spin a wheel until you get to the language you want, and press Set Language.

Another screen opens and you can type in the message you want translated.

You press the Translate button and there you have your answer. We could have used this in Italy.

Some reviewers of this program note that it isn't perfect, and I'm sure it isn't. The translations will sometimes be mechanical and clumsy. However, for occasional travel use, this translation program has a lot going for it, and could really be of some help to traveling boomers and even their children on Spring Break.

Boomers, Want to watch TV online? Try a video search engine.

2010-02-27T14:34:00.000-05:00

Like many other Boomers, I've begun watching some television online on my PC instead of on my TV. Maybe it's the lure of watching shows I've forgotten to record or the desire to try out a new show that leads me to want to watch in what I consider non-optimal conditions. Truly, watching on my computer screen isn't as satisfying an experience as watching in High Definition in my great room.

However, I think I have a problem that many others share. It's very hard to figure out where online you'll find the show you want to watch. And once you've decided what you want to watch, you may find you have to pay something to watch it. Not all television programming is available online either, so you may be out of luck all together.

I started my journey towards watching TV on my computer when I was having trouble with the cable signal for the channel that carried Lifetime. I wanted to watch my guilty secret (not any more) program, Project Runway. To find Project Runway episodes, I decided to Google the show. Google wasn't much help.

Unfortunately, Project Runway used to be on Bravo and they are still carrying full episodes of past seasons. To find the NEW episodes I had to know which season this was and what network carried the show. With a little help, I figured out that season 7 was the current season. The website for the Lifetime network is called MyLifetime.com, which is not immediately evident.

Once you arrive at mylifetime.com, you can catch up with the last 5 episodes. I don't know why Episode 1, was unavailable, but it wasn't. Once on the site, was easy to start the video going and to use the controls to make it appear in "full screen" mode. Lifetime includes some commercials in its replays, but they are not as long as the commercial breaks when you watch on TV.

Until this week, I had never tried to watch live TV. However, I thought it would be fun to see how to connect to the Olympics online. Of course, I knew that the Olympics was being broadcast by NBC. I have to say that going to the NBC website was a nightmare. I thought it was too busy and I was unable to locate "live" programming. Here is a screen shot of the website. There was lots of information on the web page. It just wasn't organized very well.

A friend of mine told me that I should look for old TV shows on iTunes, and sure enough there are plenty of TV shows for sale from Apple. You can download them, free or for a fee, and you have 24 hours to watch them.

Also, there are many episodes of TV shows available on Hulu.com, including five episodes of the popular Burn Notice. YouTube also features TV shows. If you know what you are looking for, you can search for it through YouTube's search feature. It may or may not be there. And that's the problem.

No one knows how to find these shows online. Supposed you want to watch the latest episode of American Idol on your computer. If you type into Google something like "American Idol 2010 episodes online free" you'll get a lot of answers, but none of them are very good.

Finally, I decided to try to find a video search engine. That led me to "Clicker," which seems to be an easy to use way to find the TV shows you want to watch. A quote on the website from Readwrite Web calls this "the TV Guide of Internet Television."

You may be disappointed to find that you'll have to pay for some of them, but at least you'll know where to get them. For example, Big Love, an HBO product, has to be downloaded from Amazon, YouTube or Netflix. Each has a different pricing model.

Another video search engine that seems to work for TV is called Truveo.

Yet another good site for video search is Blinkx.

Some of these search engine sites look clean and easy to understand on the first page, but once you click through, you think "this is more trouble than it's worth." Give these TV search engines a try and see if you agree with me. Or perhaps you know some better TV search engines I could try.

Boomers are starting to watch TV on their laptops and computers, for sure. Now we have to ask for the tools that will make this easy to do!

Boomers can find jobs using Facebook and Twitter

2010-02-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows that boomers are flocking to Facebook. They are connecting with old friends and far flung family at record speed. However, did you know that you can use Facebook to find a job? Boomers have to start using the job search tools their younger counterparts are using!

According to statistics from the staffing consultancy CareerXroads, 26.7% of external jobs come from REFERRALS. Certainly offline networking works. But you can also network online.

An article on the Time magazine website by Barbara Kiviat gives a few hints on how to use Facebook to find a REFERRAL source. Another great post at www.thejobbored.com suggests some more strategies. And Sirona Consulting has some other ideas. A Forbes article recounts how some people used Twitter successfully to find work. I've combined their advice into one list, but I'd suggest you look at all the articles.

1. Update all your statuses telling people that you are looking for a job. That means updating all social networking sites you currently use, including Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, Namyz, Google Buzz etc.

2. Keep updating your status as you look for work. Be specific. You never know who is reading your update. Your cousin by marriage might have a neighbor who works at the company you are targeting.

The key seems to be to include details. Don’t just say, “Brian is looking for a job.” Say: “Brian is looking for an accounting job in the Toledo area.” Don’t just say you applied to 3 jobs today, say: “Brian just sent resumes to Proctor and Gamble, Dell and Monsanto.”

3. If you are serious about finding a job, then you should post every day. Persistence is a key part of this process, Brian McCullough, of the jobbored.com says.

4. Use Facebook and Linked-In Groups. Here's what Sirona Consulting says about groups.

Using the search tool within Facebook, search for topical and relevant groups within Facebook. There are literally thousands on Facebook, and they give you a great entry point into groups of people with similar interests. There will definitely be groups on your subject / industry or work interest - you just need to find them. There are many types of networks, and it will take a little time to do these searches, but I guarantee this method will open up new networking opportunitieswith like minded people, more than happy to engage with a focused, professional person like you, that is happy to share information and experiences with others.

5.If you are an alumni of one or more colleges, join those groups. If you were in a sorority or fraternity, join that group. If you worked for a company that has a Facebook or Linked-In page, join that group. Then let that group know that you are looking for a job.

6.Last year, Tara Weiss wrote an article for Forbes.com about using Twitter to find work. The key with twitter is to tell everyone you are looking for a specific job and then direct them to an online source where they can see your profile and resume.

If you've never used Twitter, don't sign up and immediately blast people with a message saying you're out of work. Instead, build momentum slowly. Open an account and include something about your profession in your user name. Since users can search tweets by topic, that's one way of making your feed more visible.

7. Weiss also suggests looking for people on twitter who are in your field and then following them.

Many companies--especially in marketing, public relations and technology--use Twitter to post job openings, and a lot of hiring managers tweet too.

I'll have more about using professional sites like Linked-In to find jobs in another post.

Baby Boomers Find Jobs on Craigslist

2010-02-18T11:33:00.000-05:00

I came across a recent blog entry on Bucksomeboomer.com that mentioned that baby boomers might not know how to use the internet to find a job. This assertion runs contrary to my experience, where job sites like Monster might be the only web sites some boomers go to to find work.

Particularly, this blog stated that boomers might not be familiar with Craigslist as a place to find legitimate work. People may know of Craigslist as a place where people "hook up" or as a place where you can find "free stuff" in your neighborhood. But perhaps the site's reputation as a job market is underrated.

I know you can find a job on Craigslist, and a good one at that, with benefits. Several years ago, I answered an ad on Craigslist for an editor for a newsletter in the telecom industry and subsequently got the job. As any time you are answering a blind ad, you have to do your homework to make sure the listing isn't a scam. The dangers of Craigslist are the same as any classified ad. After you've sent your resume, and the organization has answered, you have to get names, numbers, website addresses etc. and check out your prospective employer. It just makes good sense to do this anyway.

Here's how the site works for job seekers. In the middle of the Craigslist website is a category called Jobs and next to that listing are Cities and States. This is a snapshot of the opening page of the New York City Craigslist website. If you live somewhere else, click on it, and you'll see your local Craigslist website.

Under the jobs listing, available jobs are categorized by industry, much as they are in a local newspaper. If you are in human resources or marketing, there is a category for you. If you don't fit into any category, you can search the site for jobs that mention your keywords. The search box is on the left of the site.

After you find the job category you are interested in, just click on the category and a list of jobs will come up on your screen. Clicking on the individual entries will give you details of the jobs offered. Sometimes you'll be given an email address to respond to. Other times you'll be asked to send your resume and an email to a Craigslist address. Here are some sample job offerings under writing/editing on Wednesday Feb 17, 2010.

While most of the writing positions are part time or internships, you can blame that on the economy. The internship with the Huffington Post, a well respected blog site, looks like a good one. The first ad, looking for a financial and regulatory writer, seeks someone with ten years of experience. That seems like a good ad for a boomer writer with that specialized experience to answer.

While boomers need to use any web site available to find themselves a job, there's no excuse for not using old fashioned networking, calling old contacts,going to industry meetings. These are tried and true ways to find jobs. However, these days networking is enhanced by social networking sites.

Bucksomeboomers.com says:

"Baby boomers need to use Facebook and Twitter as venues for finding openings. Not only by networking with other users, but following prospective employers. Last week Southwest Airlines posted on Facebook that they are looking for a Director of Technology. That sounds like a pretty good job with the most successful domestic airline."

Some music applications Boomers might like--Pandora, Slacker and Shazam

2010-02-11T13:22:00.001-05:00

A lot of my boomer friends like the fact that they can listen to music on their iPhones and don't have to carry a separate music player. Most people know the ins and outs of ordering music through the iTunes store. However, there are a few interesting music apps out there that some of my friends seem to like, and I am going to give them a try. Frankly, many of them are not "New." However, I don't think the authors of these apps thought that boomers would be their audience. I beg to disagree. If you don't have an iPhone, many of these apps are available for other smart phones, the iPod Touch, and also can be found on the companies' websites.

The first app I tried is Pandora, an Internet Radio application that lets you listen to music you know you like and finds music that is similar to that music. In this way you can find artists or albums you might not have known existed or music you've forgotten about. Pandora made Time Magazine's Best Apps of 2009 list.

The app has a pretty cool history. According to the website How Stuff Works:

Pandora relies on a Music Genome that consists of 400 musical attributescovering the qualities of melody, harmony, rhythm, form, composition and lyrics. It's a project that began in January 2000 and took 30 experts in music theory five years to complete. The Genome is based on an intricate analysis by actual humans (about 20 to 30 minutes per four-minute song) of the music of 10,000 artists from the past 100 years. The analysis of new music continues every day since Pandora's online launch in August 2005.

Pandora is available on the web at www.pandora.com or can be downloaded to your iPhone for free. When you open up the app on your iPhone you are asked to register. If you've already created an account online, the app uses that information for you. To create an Internet Radio station, just type in the name of an artist, album, or song you like. I typed in Chicago, the name of the band I loved in the 1960s. At first Pandora only played me recordings by Chicago, which I enjoyed. After a few songs, the application branched out and played me a few familiar songs by the Police and Billy Joel. That was OK, I like them both, and thought they were a welcome change. It seemed uncanny that the application could figure me out so quickly.

Here is the screen that shows the "Radio Stations" I have selected. As it is playing, Pandora shows you the cover of the album that includes the song to which you are listening.

Another Free Internet Radio option is called Slacker. If you tell Slacker you want to find music like that created and sung by Paul McCartney, it won't play any McCartney for you. Instead it will find artists with similar styles. Slacker tries to make connections between the artists you like and artists in a similar time period. And if you'd rather listen to music that has been preselected, Slacker offers professionally programmed stations.

The screen above is the first screen that you'll come to after you register. If you hit the Find Music button, you'll be asked to put in an artist or group's name. As you begin to type, Slacker predicts what you are looking for. I put in Paul McCartney and was given the option of Paul with the Beatles or just Paul. I selected the one I wanted.

After putting in Paul McCartney, I was surprised to find the iPhone playing Ramble On by Led Zeppelin. However, it was actually quite a good choice, and I hadn't realized I liked this music. Slacker, it turns out, is the lazy person's way of finding other music you may like.

A fun application that many Generation Xers know is called Shazam, and I think it could be a useful boomer tool, especially as we experience a few senior moments. Here's how Shazam works. You are listening to your favorite radio station, and you wonder "what's that song?" Perhaps you've missed the DJ's introduction. Or you are sitting at home watching a car commercial with a catchy tune and you want to know what song the people in the ad are bopping to.

Download Shazam onto your iPhone. Press the tab that says "Tag Now" and let the device "listen" to the song you are trying to identify. In very short order, the application comes up with the name of the tune, the artist singing it, the album name, genre and label. You can actually tap on the album information and buy it through the iTunes store.

A major disadvantage: The free application limits the number of times monthly you can "tag" a tune. This is too bad, because this application is addicting. Boomer's who use it will realize they can assist their memories pleasurably using this app. Shazam charges $4.99 for the complete version and has angered many iPhone users by this recent change. In the newest version of Shazam, you can also check to see if an artist is on tour and buy tickets!

So boomers, when you are getting tired of your iTunes library and can't think of anything to add to it, check out these three iPhone apps.

Facebook's Redesign Changes How to Remove Applications

2010-02-08T10:57:00.001-05:00

Facebook redesigned its site this week, and that means that some of the information in last week's post is stale already! It's still easy to remove applications. You just have to know where to look on the page.

Here is the new info about how to remove an application. When you go onto Facebook, look up at the upper right hand corner of your Home Page. There you'll see a tab for Account. Click on the Account tab, and you'll see a drop down menu that looks like this:

Click on Application Settings and that will bring you to the screen I highlighted before.

Just click the X next to the application you want to remove. And that's it!

Farmville Taking all Your Time? How to Remove Facebook Apps

2010-02-03T19:58:00.001-05:00

This is a familiar cry among my peers using Facebook: "I'm spending way too much time throwing pillows and playing Farmville! How do I remove an application from my list so I'm not tempted to play it again?" It seems like a silly thing, but some games are so addictive they consume you, especially if you are a perfectionist. You can spend a lot of time farming out there in Farmville.

So here's the quick and dirty about how to remove Facebook apps. Most of this information comes directly from another blogger at ROM Cartridge, who has written How to Use Facebook --The Complete Facebook Guide, a completely understandable "how too" book about the site. I recommend it.

Log into Facebook. Go to the gray bar at the bottom of the page, all the way in the left hand corner. Click on the part of the bar that says Applications. When you click, a popup page will show all your applications.

Click on the link that says Edit Applications. You'll then get a list of applications.

Clicking on the X next to the Farmville app will begin the removal process. You'll be asked if you want to remove it. Click Remove, and you are done.

So no more excuses, boomers. You know who you are! Take action now and remove those pesky applications from Facebook that eat up your time. Take back your productivity today!

Finding the right iPhone apps

2010-02-01T12:09:00.000-05:00

If you have an iPhone or Google Android phone, do you find yourself overwhelmed by the number and kind of applications that are out there? According to a New York Times article by Katie Harper last weekend,
"The average iPhone or iPod Touch owner uses 5 to 10 apps regularly, according to Flurry, a research firm that studies mobile trends."

There are more than 100,000 iPhone apps available for download. How do you find the ones that interest you?

"A survey of iPhones, iPod Touch and Android users conducted in July 2009 by AdMob, an advertising network that helps people promote their applications on smartphones, found that people discover apps most often by browsing app stores. And even though the iTunes store is bloated with offerings, people tend to gravitate to the most popular."

If you are counting on the iTunes App Store to look for valuable apps, then you will be relying on a popularity contest.

Here are the top most popular free apps as of this blog posting:

And the top paid apps:

And the highest grossing apps:

Most of these are not of any interest to boomers who aren't also gamers. But a few might be. But how do you know? Your odds of finding something you never knew you wanted are not good.

“For all the tens of thousands of apps out there, the odds of being exposed to more than a thousand are very small,” said Stewart Putney, the founder and chief executive of Moblyng, a company in Redwood City, Calif., that develops applications for mobile devices."

I've been frustrated at the sheer number of applications out there for a while. How do I determine which ones are worth my while and which ones I should recommend to you?

Unlike most people, I tend to get recommendations from friends. I ask them a simple question: What's on your iPOD? If they answer that they've downloaded an app that I haven't heard about, I ask more questions and ask them to demonstrate it to me. When I find one I'm interested in, I download it myself. That's how I got the great Dragon Dictation app I wrote about last week. And that's how I got to know about the Flashlight function.

Out on the web, there are many sites that give a list of the iPhone apps of the week, or the most effective apps for a particular purpose. Mashable.com has an article article about 700 iPhone Apps, by category. Still, 700 is too many for me to sort through at once.

Sometimes articles on the web are very narrow in scope. For example, if you like to golf, you might be interested in this article, about the best iPhone Golf GPS apps. If you are a woodworker, perhaps you'd like the apps reviewed in Stu's Shed, a woodworking blog. Quilters, knitters and other hobbyests have their own apps.

Time magazine puts together lists of iPhone apps it likes. In this list labeled Top iPhone Applications, Time recommends three music apps I think boomers will like or at least want to try. I'll be looking at them in the future and may write about them in this blog.

Will Boomers Like the New Apple iPAD?

2010-01-28T11:52:00.002-05:00

Before I draw a conclusion about whether or not boomers will like the new Apple iPAD, let me tell you that I haven’t had a chance to play with the device, yet. However, all indications are that baby boomers will like it. The device was introduced Wednesday and if you missed the hoopla surrounding the release, then you don’t watch much news or read the newspaper. My local newspaper featured a story about it on the front page, and I live in New Jersey, not Silicon Valley!

At first glance, it seems that Apple got this mostly right. The device is much more than an e-book reader. It can be used to surf the web, view videos, play games etc. Yet it's easy and intuitive to use. It is also very thin and light weight, a feature boomers will love when they throw the device into their carry-on bag. And, yes, I think we will like reading on this device. The keyboard is the same virtual keyboard that comes with the iPhone, but bigger. The jury is still out as to whether boomers will enjoy the experience of typing on this keyboard.

The price may put some people off, but the entry level iPAD which lists for $499 is comparable in price to the Kindle DX. The Kindle DX lists for $489. The Kindle is a dedicated book reader with wireless 3G communications bundled into the price. The iPAD is a multi-faceted device. The entry level device comes with WiFi (you can use it at hotspots and in your home if you have a wireless network) but not 3G. If you want 3G it will cost you a monthly fee, and you’ll have to upgrade to a pricier model. Models range in price up to a whopping $829.

You know through previous posts that I had some issues with the Kindle DX which I thought wasn’t easy to use at all, especially in an academic setting. On paper it looks as though iPAD developers took some of the criticisms to heart. In his announcement, Steve Jobs said that Apple is clearly “standing on the shoulders” of Amazon, and Apple does owe a debt of gratitude to Amazon for establishing this category of device.

One of my problems with the Kindle was ease of navigation. You couldn’t just easily flip through pages to go back to something you read earlier. If you are using the iPAD to read a book, you can flick through the pages (forward and back) using your finger and easily flip to the table of contents. Apparently, like the Kindle, you can change the size of the typeface, an important feature for boomers who want devices that are easy on our eyes.

This quote is from Apple: “The iBooks app is a great, new way to read and buy books. Just download the app for free from the App Store, and you’ll be able to buy everything from classics to bestsellers from the built-in iBookstore. Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. To read it, all you have to do is tap on it and it opens up. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich, color, so it’s very easy to read, even in low light.” That last part is good for Boomers too!

Rob Pegoraro in his Fast Forward blog on the WashingtonPost.com says “The iBooks store won't come near the inventory of Amazon's Kindle Store, but the iPad's screen offers a level of detail impossible on the e-ink screens of the Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook and other e-readers. A copy of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's "True Compass" opened on a prototype iPad looked strikingly like a paper edition, featuring black-and-white and color photos, finely drawn text and no wait to turn an onscreen page."

One feature that Boomers like on the Kindle seems to be lacking on the iPAD. Kindle’s Whispersync technology keeps your books all on the same page, whether you are reading on your iPhone, Kindle, or PC. I didn’t see any mention of this feature in the material Apple sent out.

Publishers will like that the e-reader part of the iPAD uses books published in the e-pub format, which is an industry standard format. The Kindle uses a proprietary format to Amazon, and books downloaded to the Kindle can only be used on the Kindle or on Kindle Reader software.

Stay tuned for more information on the iPAD. One good thing about the device is that it will be available in Apple retail stores to look at a play with before you buy. You can’t do that with a Kindle.

For more information: http://mashable.com/2010/01/27/apple-ibooks/

Dictate to your iPhone, Boomers --It really works

2010-01-24T13:57:00.002-05:00

Have you tried programs that let you dictate to your computer? I think a lot of boomers have given up on these because they tried the earliest generation of software that just didn't work well. I've tried to use these programs from time to time over the last 15 years or so. Most of the time, they just didn't work the way I expected them to. The user had to train the software to accept his or her voice, and that was a very time consuming process. Even when I spent the hours needed to train the software, the programs were spotty at best. I spent quite a few dollars on these software programs only to abandon them shortly after I bought them.

Now, I'm happy to report, a little FREE software application for the iPhone called Dragon Dictation has changed my mind. Yes, it isn't perfect. You do have to edit the finished product some. However, it is a really USEFUL program, and that's what you really want. Best of all, you don't have to spend any time at all training the software. It recognizes your voice, no matter who you are and what your accent.

A boomer friend of mine who is a professional SAT tutor says this app has saved her hours of time. She can now dictate emails to her students confirming appointments and answering questions, rather than worrying about searching for letters on a keyboard. When I tried it, I was simply amazed!

This program is perfect for baby boomers. We didn't grow up with texting so we're not used to using our thumbs to type. Some of us --especially the men --never elected to take typing in high school. Now, all the children in our junior high have to take "Keyboarding," which is a typing class on the computer. Many boomers I know are reluctant users of keyboards, especially small ones. Here is a program that lets you by-pass the keyboard for the most part. As my son would say, "Sweet!"

Here is the very simple opening page of this app:

You tap the red bull's-eye and continue talking. When you tap the DONE button, the dictation will show up on your phone.

As you can see by the screen shots, the program doesn't get all the words in the sentence right, but it is very easy to edit.

Finally you have the option to copy the message onto your clipboard so you can paste it into another application, email the message, or text it.

I can imagine a number of different uses for this program: make your shopping list on the fly, complete a time sheet, dictate a text message to your kids, send yourself an email to remind you of something etc. I think this is an excellent tool for Boomers and I know I'll be using it.

Here are some other opinions of Dragon Dictation.

Do you like Audio Books? Many Boomers do.

2010-01-21T21:44:00.001-05:00

I'm not a big fan of audio books, but I used to be. When my kids were young, we'd put on classic books to entertain us during long car rides. Now I prefer shorter formats. In particular, I like to listen to NPR's Selected Shorts Podcasts. This PRI (Public Radio International) program features actors reading short stories, and I find it riveting. I signed up for Selected Shorts Podcasts in the iTunes store and download these stories for free.

I have several baby boomer friends that use audio books while they commute to and from work. They'd be lost without them. Some of these friends check out audio book CDs from the library, but many get their books online and download them to an MP3 Player or iPhone.

Now many libraries offer an option, through a company called Overdrive, for patrons to "check out" and download audio books from their public library's web site. I'm sure many boomers who have grown away from using libraries were unaware of this new service.

An article at Babyboomer-magazine.com in 2009 discusses why boomers like their audio books so much. The author, who isn't named, suggests audiobookstoreportal.com as a good place to go to find audio books. According to that website, once you pay for your book, "you'll be taken to a page to download your new audio content. Once the files have been downloaded to your computer you can listen to them whenever you want, transfer them to a portable player (yes you can get your audio book to your iPod!), or burn them to CD to enjoy on a conventional home stereo or in-car audio system."

I decided to investigate Audiobookstoreportal.com's website to see how it works. The one thing I noticed right away was that audio books vary widely in price. Take a look at the website, and you'll see one book for $1.50 and another for $29.99. While you can download many of the books as MP3s directly to your computer and then load them onto your MP3 player, it appears that the way to get these audio books onto an iPOD is to download them to your computer, burn them to a CD, then upload the CD to iTunes. After all that, you can transfer the audio books to your iPhone. One advantage that Audiobookstoreportal.com has over its more famous competition Audible.com, is that the pricing structure is straight-forward. You pay the price listed, with no membership fee.

Audible.com is probably the best known website to look for and purchase audio books for download. It is similar to Audiobookportal.com in that users also have to download the items to their computers, and then transfer them to a CD for upload to iTunes. Audible also makes users download a software program to facilitate the processes. One of my objections to Audible is that the service uses a complicated system of payment. You are enrolled in their website for a price ($7.99 for 3 months with an introductory offer, and then $14.99/month). For that amount, you get one audio book a month and discounts if you want to buy more. If you are sure you are going to listen to that many audio books, by all means use Audible! It'll save you some money. However, it could be a bad deal if you are just an occasional listener.

I also took a look at the iTunes store, to see what their audio book selection looked like. Here is a page from the iTunes store. These books are downloaded directly to your iTunes account and then to your iPOD or iPhone when you sync with the computer. They are usually expensive options that cost about the same amount as a hard back book.

Of course the public library is the least expensive way to give audio books a try. If you want to use your public library's Overdrive program, you may have to download some software from the library's website. After that, you will have access to your audio book for a predefined "lending period." You may prefer this if you are able to complete listening to books in a timely fashion. It certainly is the least expensive way to try out audio books!

So, fellow boomers, I'd like to know if you are listening to audio books and if you are, do you find them difficult to find, download or use? Please feel free to comment. Thanks.