How to Opt out of Personalization on Google

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.

Tell Google What You Think About Junk Search Results, Boomers

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?

Eight Ways One Boomer Uses Her iPad Daily

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

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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.

Blog Basics for Boomers

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.

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 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/

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

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: Get Out There and Take Classes Online!

Recently I've gotten a lot of interest from friends of mine who would like to go back to college to complete degrees or to get a Masters and are fascinated that some of the classes I am taking are taught online. I know this isn't a new phenomena. A friend of mine was going for her PhD online at least ten years ago. Her program involved some online courses and some on site coursework. I remember she flew out to her host university's campus to participate in some activities. However, recently some of my friends want to know: how does taking classes online work? So I'm going to try to answer their questions in this blog post.

At Pace University, and many other universities, online courses are taught through the website and a portal program called Blackboard. You access Blackboard with your university email address and password. When you open the program, you are given all kinds of options. I click on the one that says "Courses in Which You are Enrolled." That brings me to another page where the professor has made announcements for the week. On the left hand side of the page is a list of other options.

The majority of my courses include "lectures" from an instructor which are posted on the web site under the Course Documents section. Assignments include readings from the assigned books or outside articles which may be posted to the website under the Course Documents section. Sometimes a video clip or Powerpoint to watch is posted. Or students may be asked to find their own examples through the library web site. In one course which was being taken by Masters in Publishing students from across the US and even one on an army base in Germany, we were told to go to a magazine newsstand and select a relevant magazine for an assignment. In other words, while assignments may be online, students often use books, magazines and other materials to complete their assignments.

In many classes, much of the course work is done via the Blackboard Discussion Board. On the Discussion Board the teacher may pose a question, ask for a reaction to the reading, ask for questions on the lecture or lead a discussion on any number of open ended topics. Sometimes a professor says you have to respond to one or more of your classmates, but often the discussions are so interesting people tend to interact with many more of their classmates. Also, Discussion Board topics are much more useful when the instructors weigh in on the subjects with their expertise and points of view.

Key to keeping an online class interesting and engaging is the teacher's ability to be organized and to be available to students via e-mail and other communications options. Since you can't see your professor in person, you have to get good at framing questions precisely so that the correct question gets answered. Teachers need solid lecture notes to make this work.


Online learners are also asked to do group projects and collaborate. Sometimes they collaborate via Blackboard tools. Sometimes they use other collaborative tools like Google Docs, a free collaborative offering from Google. Papers are collected online too. Students create Microsoft Word files for their papers and drop the assignments into a "Digital Drop Box." Like the drop box at Blockbuster, once you put your paper there, you cannot retrieve it.

People may be surprised to learn that tests can be given online as well. Sometimes tests are simply questions that  students can take as much time as they want to answer, and then post the answers to the Assessment section of Blackboard. Sometimes there are timed tests that have to be completed within a time frame stated in the Assessment section.

I know some online Universities use videos of teachers giving lectures, but that hasn't been my experience at Pace. Nor do I have to tune in to a "live" class at a certain time, which I know is a staple of some other University classes.

While I take some of my classes on campus, I enjoy my online classes as well. Done correctly, with great care from the instructor, the student gets individual attention even though he or she is just a name and an email address. I can't tell you how good returning to school has made me feel, fellow Boomers. So I highly recommend that those of you who haven't tried this before, take a class online to see how it suits you.

Facebook Privacy--What it means for Boomers

Facebook changed its privacy policy this week, and basically reset everyone's privacy settings so that everyone can see everything you post. And Friends of Friends can see your photos.  If you click here, you will be sent to an excellent blog post by Brian Krebbs at the Washington Post that explains exactly what Facebook did. (Warning: you  may have to close an ad before you can be linked to the blog. It's annoying but worth it.) 

I don't intend to go over the same material Krebbs covered in this blog post. I only want to warn my fellow Boomers, especially the ones who are only occasional users of Facebook, to get in there and check your privacy settings immediately. I think that Boomers have an expectation of privacy that the younger generations who have grown up with social networking don't share. Yet, we have to expect that everything we put on the web will be fodder for some search engine sometime in the future, unless we protect it.

Do you really want Google or Bing pulling up posts you made to update your status? Take something innocent, like a post about a sick member of the family. Once that post is available to be indexed by Bing or Google, it is on the web for posterity, my friends. Your birthday is another example. If you let Facebook make this information public, then you are inviting marketers into your life. This blog article by Kaila Colbin shows how Facebook's decision to pull the privacy rug out from under its users is motivated by the the ability to sell the information it is collecting on us. I understand there are many ways that marketers can get this information anyway, but why make it easy to be a target for them?  The only way to protect your information is to make sure you keep your privacy settings updated.

Like many of my Boomer friends, I use Facebook to keep up with family and friends. I'm not interested in cultivating a vast number of friends of friends. And I am angry with Facebook for resetting my privacy settings --really without much notice. Frankly, I think they should have used my old settings as the default, and asked me to opt in to their new settings, which I would have refused.

Also, there should have been more notice given. While there was a big banner telling me to update my settings when I signed on last week, the keepers of the Facebook community didn't email me, and believe me, they have my email address. We all should have been warned before they made this huge change.