Boomers, go ahead and Skype

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.

Help for the Boomer Body--FoodScanner app

I recently heard about an Apple iPhone app that is a perfect fit for those boomers who want to lose weight or follow a healthy diet.  A lot of experts believe that tracking calories --writing down everything you eat-- is the best way to keep on a diet or even maintain preferred weight.

FoodScanner is an application that works with the iPhone camera to scan bar codes of foods in your pantry at home or packages at the supermarket. The amazing thing is that it is so easy to use --just point and shoot! You can use the app to figure the number of calories you've had for your meal, or maybe to decide if you'll buy a product that may be too many calories when it comes down to it. Of course, you have to be honest and report the correct number of servings! No fair saying you had one, when really you had two!

Before I downloaded the $1.99 ($3.20 including tax) app,  I thought long and hard about giving Apple and the folks at The Daily Burn my money. But I looked at reviews for FoodScanner and they were universally good. So I thought I'd give it a try. First I watched this demo video provided by the people who made the app. I want to congratulate them for a lucid video that showed me exactly how scan the packaging. After that,  I went over to my pantry and pulled out a box of angel hair pasta, opened the icon, pressed a little button that looked like a lightening bolt, and aimed my camera at the bar code.  As soon as I got the bar code within the limits on the application, the phone automatically took a picture of the code and converted it into this piece of information:

 
Then I was given the option to input how many servings I had of this item.

 
I selected two servings and hit the Next button. There I found this:

Pressing the little  arrow icon brought a screen that showed all the nutritional information for the package.

Maybe I'm easily impressed, but this little program will probably be very useful in my life. No, it doesn't factor in all of the fiber in this product, so you won't be able to use it to count points for programs like Weight Watchers. However, it should be a very good addition for those Boomers who want to know our calorie counts.

Hold on! I'm starting to get Twitter

I’m starting to understand Twitter, I think. This is the service (www.twitter.com) made famous by Ashton Kutcher and other celebs who get really excited that they have thousands of people following their every move.

People post messages limited to 140 characters either from the web or from their mobile phones. The messages are broadcast to a list of followers. Posting is called tweeting. People can say anything they want, from the boring to the interesting, on Twitter. You won’t know which you are getting—boring or interesting-- until you try to follow someone who uses the service.

At first I thought this was a service for the self-absorbed. I mean, do we really need to know what celebrities are doing every moment of the day?  However, I’ve come to see it as a useful  way to get news about an industry, a colleague or even a cousin. People who tweet from industry trade shows, for example, post opinions about presentations or tweet industry  news boiled down to its essentials. Following them clues you in to stories you might have missed otherwise.

And that colleague, well, who knew she liked to cook and was testing recipes for a cookbook?  I’ve also enjoyed following one of the organizations to which I belong. Different people tweet for this organization, and the latest one reported on what a senator said to her. It’s a sound bite I otherwise wouldn’t have known and it gives the reader the feeling of being on the “inside.”  Of course, you have to realize that what is being tweeted is what people want others to know. It may sound spontaneous, but it really isn’t.

One of the key features of Twitter is the ability to “Retweet” by cutting and pasting. If you get some important news, you can cut and paste it into your “What are you doing box?” and send it on to everyone who follows you. In that way, messages like the sad, terrible, unthinkable, killings at Fort Hood this week, get out even faster than ever before. Marketers love this feature too, because word of new products, gimmicks, and giveaways, travel at lightening speed.

Do Boomers tweet? Oprah does, but the jury is out on whether this media will have a lasting impact on our generation.  Some media research from Pew shows that only 9% of Boomers actually use Twitter. However, I think Twitter has a lot of application for Boomers. For one thing, it is very easy to use. You sign up, and Twitter will ask your permission to look in your email account for people who are already on the service. You can choose to follow them. And maybe they’ll follow you. Right now, I concentrate on tweeting about what I’m working on for this blog. I don’t like getting too personal. I’d be interested in knowing how you are using Twitter, if you do, and what features you like or dislike.