There is a New Web Site for Boomers

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.

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!