Social Networking….It’s Nothing New

There is certainly nothing new about social networking. It’s being going on since the beginning of man. It would take many forms, sitting around a fire, gathering at a feast, it could be families getting together or members of other villages.

As societies developed, social organizations came into being, with various clubs, church groups, and civic organizations. My own personal networking would be my membership in a veteran’s organization, meeting friends and coworkers at a café for breakfast, coffee shops or occasionally at the local bar.

So social networking has always been around in some form. Now with technology as advanced as it is, social networking has taken on a whole new structure. The computer and internet has brought people together like never before. We can connect with others with our smart phones, tablets and computers from anywhere we might be.

My first introduction to social networking through technology was MySpace (does that even still exist?). It was something my niece would get on after school each day. I never really paid any attention to it, just that she’d be on it for hours with her friends each day. This apparently was just something for the young teenagers. I would just continue working with the CAD program on the other computer while she did her MySpace thing.

I later heard about Facebook when some family members started hounding me to get an account so we could stay in touch. Well, I finally caved after a lot of resisting. So what did I first see? Everyone was playing games! That’s all there was and now they were after me to play games with them. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with games, it’s just not my cup of tea. Slowly there started to be some interaction with some real posts…but the games still plagued the news feed. I learned to stop them for awhile, but now they’re coming back again, if only they could be stopped for good. My experience with Facebook has been limited, with a few pages that I’ve subscribed to and posting and poking. All this interaction is only between existing friends and family. And of course the occasional tirade by some (family members) who just can’t agree with anything some of us have to say. So the Facebook networking still continues although it is very limited to just a few friends and family members. I’ve tried in vain to get my own children involved so we could interact, but that will never happen so I don’t push for that anymore.

There is also Twitter, one that I never got into. Some I know tweet about every little thing that goes on throughout the day. There are many who do use it productively in their every day business. Since I don’t use it and am not familiar with all the in’s and out’s of Twitter, I won’t comment on it any further. We’ll leave that up to those who use it and know it well.

Now there’s a new one, Google+. You might say it’s still in it’s infancy (being around less than a year) but growing up fast! I joined Google+ once it went public, thinking it was maybe a Facebook clone, but with out all the clutter. Oh, but I was wrong! Google+ has broken down all the barriers of social networking through the internet! Since joining Google+, here’s what I’ve found.

The obvious was that lack of all the clutter. I really liked the idea of the circles. You can organize all your people you have in your circles in a way that is meaningful to you. Create a new circle, give it a name and put the people you want in that circle. Each person you have in your circles can even be in more than one. It’s a great idea for complete control of where your people are and who you share things with. And as far as sharing goes, it’s easy to share with just who you want.

And there are the Hangouts. I only recently joined a Hangout and it was an awesome experience! You can hangout with up to 10 people at a time. Then what Google did was to give us the ability to share a document during the hangout. Now you can do even more! You’ll really need to check this feature out.

And now you might say, but all my friends are on Facebook and there not going there so I won’t either. Well, when I started on Google+ my friends wouldn’t join either. Some did and never used it, but others just refused. So if they don’t go, and you want people in your circles to interact with, there is an answer.

Public Circles. Yes there is such a thing. There are thousands of public circles that you can add, and many of these people will add you back. Now you have a start to make new friends with Google+. Now here’s the really neat part, you’ll meet people from all around the world! Oh, but now you say, “I don’t know their language”. Well, there’s an answer to that too, Google Translate.

A simple right click on the page and choose Translate to English and viola! you have it in English.

I could go on with much more, but I’ll let you explore for yourself.

The bottom line…if you wish to socialize on the internet, there are many options available to you. I only talked about a few here, but there are many more. So choose one or two or maybe even three. They are all different and all serve a different purpose. Get active and go out there and make some new friends or just stay in touch with the ones you have. One more thing I’d like to note. This is particularly helpful to those who may be physically or emotionally disabled to where they can’t get out every day to be with people. I personally am glad for it myself. Since I’ve been dependent on a wheelchair I can’t get around like I used to but I can still stay in touch people and make new friends everyday!

-Ed

Making Life an Adventure

 

My sister just returned from her first cruise and she posted this on her Facebook page, “It just came to me…Life is a party…”. Well, I can agree with that to a point, but I’d rather believe that life should be an adventure. I think I’ve pretty much made my life an adventure so I thought I should write a little something about that here. I would like to describe some of my adventures and hopefully encourage all my readers to make their life an adventure also.

I have had the privilege to know a lot of different folks around town since I first moved here. Many of them just live their lives going to work every day, they would take vacation days to work around home and never go anywhere special. Some have never tried anything new or challenging. There are some who have not even traveled more than 100 miles from home. This doesn’t sound very adventurous to me.

When I turned 18, I decided right then that I would join the Army, so that’s what I did. I was living in Florida at the time so I traveled first to Jacksonville for my physical and induction into the Army. Having past the physical, I was inducted into the Army and immediately sent to Ft. Benning, Georgia for my basic training. My first real adventure had begun. The next three years would prove to be very adventurous indeed. I traveled around the country serving at different military posts and spent one year fighting in Vietnam (not the most pleasant adventure).

After separation from active duty I came home, started college and took a job with the county. The job was with the mosquito control which meant I would be traveling around the county to all the wetlands controlling them where they where populating. The most challenging part of that job was avoiding all the poisonous snakes and alligators that I would be encountering. While doing all this, I also became friends with a local diving instructor. So the next thing I know I was getting the training I needed to get my certifications to be a scuba diver. Now, I would be diving around the area to depths exceeding 100 feet. From snakes to alligators to the little fishes swimming around me, I’m living an adventure!

Living at home proved less than desirable, so I moved on. I left west central Florida and headed southeast to where an uncle of mine lived. I didn’t live there very long when I met the girl who would become my wife. She was there staying with a cousin, having moved down from Wisconsin. We both decided that it wasn’t the place for us so we moved here to Northeast Wisconsin where I live to this day.

Not long after moving here, getting married and starting a family, I would meet someone who would introduce my to my next adventure, flying. I started with flying a Cessna 150, then later I would fly a 172. A few years later I met a new friend who would teach me to fly the right seat in a twin engine Cessna 421. I loved flying that one especially! We would fly around the Great Lakes area and out to the east coast. I had a lot of great experiences flying, too many to mention here.

My work for a local shipbuilding company took me around the Great Lakes also. They would fly me to various cities to work on the ships and I even sailed on a few of them.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel from coast to coast, north to south and points in between. I’ve seen San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Tampa, Tallahassee, San Antonio and Houston, just to name a few. To write about them all, I would have to write a book. I mention them only to let you know that you can get out to other places to see new things, and meet new people. Make life an adventure!

Some of you may not be able to travel to find new adventures. But, you can find many close to home. Check your local papers and information centers for activities that are going on in your area. I’m often surprised when I hear someone say there’s nothing to do around here. Why then do tourists flock to our county for a vacation? There are things to do. There are adventures here close to my home and yours.

I’m limited now as to what I can do and where I can go. I now have to use a powered wheel chair to get around and I no longer drive myself around in my van. My adventures are my writing, helping friends with their computer skills and things like that. I find new things to do right here at home. I’m not going to stop being adventurous just because I can’t get out and about. I enjoy checking my stats on this blog and seeing that I’ve had readers from Russia, India, Germany and Canada. I hope to see many more readers from around the world. To me this is quite exiting! I’d like to make friends with some of these people to learn about them and their way of life. This is my new adventure.

Now when you’re done reading this, if your life has been an adventure, share the memories with your children, grandchildren, friends and family. I’m sure they’d love to hear your stories. If you haven’t been adventurous, then maybe it’s time to start. Life’s too short to get stuck in a rut and do nothing. Have fun and create some new memories, do some exploring, meet new people and enjoy life to the fullest. I think that’s what our creator would want for us.

Have a happy adventure my friends!

-Ed

Cloud Computing

 

Cloud Computing? When I first heard the term I had no idea what Cloud Computing was. It sounded like something very mysterious. How could one compute in a cloud? I started researching what Cloud Computing was. I read everything I could find and, well, I’d started doing it myself a few years before when I started my Windows Live account. I discovered that it came with a Windows Live Workspace which is now called SkyDrive. I could upload documents to it and I could even edit them right there in my browser.

I now also have my Google account. Have had for quite some time now. I love the fact that I can upload documents to my space on Google docs and edit them there also. I can upload my photos to my Picasa account and use them here in my blog and my family website.

Cloud computing is simply creating and saving your work on servers somewhere on the web, rather than just on your computer at your desk at home or work.

I think cloud computing is the wave of the future. It won’t be long before you will not even have any productivity software on your computer. Microsoft has this already with 360. All you do is subscribe to the service rather than buy and install all this software. Another example is on the computers that we buy today. Microsoft’s Word starter and Excel starter is preinstalled on your computer when you buy it. Or is it? It isn’t. Try using it when you’re offline. It won’t work, you have to be online for it to download to your computer each time you click the icon to use it. Then when you shut down your computer it’s gone. It will download again the next time you call for it.

One advantage I see to subscribing to a service rather than buy and install the software is that you’ll never have to buy the latest and greatest version every time they come up with one. It’ll be there when they release it automatically. No more worrying about updates, licenses and all that. It’ll always be there when you need it.

Collaborating on projects is another clear advantage with Cloud Computing. When you collaborate in the cloud, there aren’t documents floating around in everyone’s inboxes in various stages of revision. You have one. And that one document is in the cloud where all revisions also reside. A nice orderly place. A place where everyone working on a project can go to work on it.

The only disadvantage to Cloud Computing is that you must always have access to the web to use it. If you’re offline, you’re out of luck. Being able to be online at all times is getting much easier now and much more reliable. Not only do we have the broadband service with our cable companies, dsl  with phone service, but G3 with cell phone companies is now in stages of being replaced with G4 which will prove to be much faster and compete with cable broadband.

Another place we my have been working in the cloud is at our workplaces. All of our data was saved to the company’s servers and not on our workstation. The company had their own network and maintained all their own servers. We were computing in the cloud before the term was even coined.

As we continue to watch computing evolve, I think we’ll see some real dramatic changes coming really quick. We’ll have to adapt to subscribing to a service to use their software, saving all our documents somewhere else, etc. It sometimes makes one feel as though we’ve lost control of what we do somehow.

Another point I would like to make while I’m here. We are always concerned about security while working on the internet. Is our data safe? Well, I might suggest that is safer there than in your home. Or on your computer. You and I are always being reminded to backup, backup and to backup some more. And we don’t do it. At least most of us don’t. And what about theft, or fire or flood? I guess from that point of view I would rather my data be tucked away safely on the web. No matter what happens at home, or to my computer, my data is safe, and I can get a new computer and get to my data.

I just set up my cloud printing with Google Cloud print. It was easy to do. The main reason I did it was to be able to print from my tablet. I was having difficulty printing from my app on my tablet and found Google Cloud Print to be an excellent work around. I can see a lot of uses for cloud printing. You can print to your office printer no matter what your physical location is. Print photos to your home printer or have a friend print to yours while on vacation. Maybe you want to print to a clients printer, the possibilities are endless.

The more computing I do in the cloud the more I’m liking it. I think as you start exploring  Cloud Computing you will too. So you might say I’ve got my head in the clouds. Cloud Computing that is. Go ahead and get your head in the clouds too. I would recommend starting with Google docs. Save your work there and you can edit and collaborate on projects right there in the Google Cloud.

I think that’s enough said about Cloud Computing. Maybe I’ve convinced some of you to give it a try. Those who are already using it, I’m sure would agree. It would be interesting to hear from some of you using it to let the rest of us know how it has helped you. Maybe you can give us some unique ways to make use of it.

-Ed

My Autobiography

Dear Reader,
Recently, I came to the realization that I really haven't taken the time to tell my children all the memories that I have throughout my life. I also would have liked to have heard stories from my parents and Grandparents. All too often we get too busy to sit down to tell our children about ourselves, or about our own parents. When our parents are gone and we are gone, so are the stories of our lives. This realization is what has driven me to start an autobiography of my own life for my children to keep and read for themselves.
How I've started my writing was to create an outline to give me a base to work from. I started from my childhood years to the present. As I worked on the outline, I would reminisce about all the stories that I wanted to share. There are some that are very pleasant, some funny and some that may be a bit too embarrassing to share at all. I won't make this a 'tell all' story, but it will give my children a pleasant way to know me even better.
This is something I would encourage every parent to do for their children. They want to know you and hear the stories that you have stored in your memory. They would like to know your parents and Grandparents. Encourage your children to do the same and make it a tradition to hand down their life stories to their children also. It'll create a family bond that will be treasured for generations to come.
I'll be including photos from vacations, special events, and family members and so on. I think this will be better than all the photo albums that I have that never seem to leave the bookshelf. There are many memories stored away in all those photos that I have. I'm sure you have found the same to be true in your life also.
As time goes on there will be more stories to tell. This book won't be finished until I am. I would strongly suggest that all my readers do the same for their children. It can be something that you want to share with them only, or you can publish it to be shared with your friends, or the public, if that is what you wish.
Get started today, happy writing, you'll be glad you did and your children will be too.
-Ed

Improving My Look

No, not the way I look, if that's what you're thinking. When I first started with 'Blogger' I did a quick setup just to get the thing going. Now it's time to get into the nuts and bolts of this thing, refine the looks and learn just how everything works. I've switched to the new and improved editor, which I like, and adjusted the clock so I won't be on Pacific time, sorry Melinda. (The posts are now on Central time).

I found a new template that looks better to me. You might say that it's more 'me' than the other one was. This one is called 'Harbor'. I don't know that I would be changing this theme for quite a while since I really do like it. In fact I don't know what else I would add to this blog site except maybe a gadget that I can't live without.

Thank you for the comments left on this blog and others posted on face-book also. When posting comments, remember that suggestions for future blogs will also be appreciated. I don't always know what people have on their minds and would want to read about so your input is invaluable.

Most of you who already know me are aware of the other sites that I have on the 'net'. Those who may not be aware can find them by Google-ing  my name to find them.This is one of those times when I'm mostly writing some idle thoughts, but when I get going, I intend to try to get you thinking. It'll make your head hurt!


-Ed

My New Blog Site

At the suggestion of my oldest daughter, I've decided to go with another site to post my blogs. This one on 'Blogger' seems to be a good choice. Now that I've started it, I hope to continue blogging on my new page.

You will be able to read my thoughts about the political scene, religion, and just everyday happenings.

I would also hope to see blogs posted be the kids too. I do believe that this is a great way to communicate our thoughts in between the phone calls. By writing a blog about something we want to say, it allows us the chance to think through the topic without interruption and distraction.

So enjoy your reading and come back often to see what I've posted here. I'll be back with something new as often as I can.

-Ed