Manual - with carbon paper and lots of whiteout.

Woohoo - electric!

Note the one line window for text preview/correction. When you hit return it sounded like machine gun fire as the line typed out at "super" speed.

CRT connected to a central computer somewhere "out there".

Word Processing! Beam me up Scotty!

And the personal Mac journey begins.

Then they start to get pretty.

Can it get any better?

It can get better!

Now I'm working on the amazing MacAir

The transition from work to play time is complete with my ipad2. Not as practical as the MacAir but oh the hours spent on non-productive games

What has your technical journey been like?

Mainebabyboomer.com

The mainebabyboomer.com blog has moved to mainebabyboomer.com/blog

For those that know me, don’t worry, I’m not leaving my current employment.  What I’m learning there (and will continue to learn) I’ll be using in the role of tour guide and developer for new/small businesses, helping them pull together the pieces for their first web presence. My goal is to help you fill that gap between no website, and a custom web marketing approach.

I’m not officially launched yet, but if you know of a small business looking for an affordable website, feel free to send them my way at gloria@mainebabyboomer.com.

More details coming soon!

You can find all these filters in the iTunes store.  Their names are: PhotoArtista – Oil, RomanticPhoto, and VintageScene.  You can find them by entering these names in the search field of the iTunes store (If you have not already, you should download at least iTunes version 10.)

I took a photo on my back deck, then applied various filters and came up with different views of the same photo. These photos are below, and in my next post I will go into more detail on the use:

Original Photo

PhotoArtista 1

PhotoArtista 2 – with color adjustment.

RomanticPhoto

VintageScene

More soon….but chores are calling.

Today’s post:
Do Baby Boomers Need Social Media?

Read previous post:
3 Reasons for Baby Boomers to Jump Into Blogging and Social Media?

However, I know there are many out there who are curious about the appeal of this device, and when I get mine I hope to help others in the same boat by posting a series here on my learning how to use it, what apps I’m adding and how, and other “tech bridge” posts that I hope will help the baby boomers out there jump in with enthusiasm.

Check back soon for more…

Hold down the Shift and Fn keys and click the Print Scrn key – on my laptop computer it’s F11 key in the top row – yours may be a different F key on your computer or on a full keyboard it may be a separate key, but it will have some abbreviation of Print Screen written on the key and be in the upper right quadrant.  The Fn key will likely be near the Shift key in the lower left quadrant.

From there, open your favorite image program (I use Photoshop, but most PCs come with Paint – look under Start – All Programs – Accessories – Paint. You can use Control + V to paste the screenshot into program.

A simple thing to do once you know the right key combination!

My early work days were as a secretary (before it was known as the more accurate term of administrative assistant). Some of the technological wonders were:

• Moving from manual typewriter to IBM selectric. Moving from carbon paper to photocopiers. Moving from eraser, to white out, to strikeover tape.
• Moving from IBM selectric to a model that would hold one line of type in memory before it shot it out like a machine gun attack.
• Moving from one line of memory to a Wang word processor, where you could cut a whole section of text and paste it in another location (Beam me up Scotty).

Why the trip down memory lane?  In the last 9 years I’ve moved from developing websites with Dreamweaver with templates and library items on local computer, to using includes to change all pages with one small move, to developing websites on WordPress, where after it’s built even the non-techie customer can take over the majority of their changes without advanced knowledge.

The job I do now has changed since one year ago, changed drastically since 5 years ago, and is almost unrecognizable to the job I entered 9 years ago.  In a few years from now it will change again.  No matter what your age or experience, if you are working for a living it is imperative to not only stay on top of the newest technology in your job, but also in the newest technology period.  The manual elevator operator is long gone, out of most people’s memory, and eventually that will happen to most of us no matter what job we are currently doing.  Look around the corner, down the long mile, and learn for the future to prepare for the job resurgence that WILL come, but might not look the same as the job we’ve done in the past.  Good luck to all the job seekers out there!

Social Media video (will take you to YouTube)

Particularly in this economy, when so many have lost their jobs, I was stunned by the statistic on employers finding employees through LinkedIn.

Not to mention, the Customer Service implications are HUGE!

Gloria Maher
Born to babyboomer generation, but living and working in generation Y and X.

Have you seen the Sprint commercial that uses statistics? I love the part where it gets to Twitter and shows all the little blue twitter birds – instead of Tweeting they’re saying “Me Me Me Me”.  Then it goes on to say that 26% of the people watching have no idea what Twitter means.

In a previous post I mentioned that I thought Twitter was Facebook with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).  This week I attended a 2 hour seminar on Social Media (e.g. blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and many many others).  I have a better idea now of how Twitter can actually be of value.  For use on a personal level, I’m still not entirely converted – I’d rather write in this blog where I’m only limited by my time – not by the 140 character Twitter post limit. (But then again, none of my friends and only one relative are on Twitter.  I have found it enjoyable to see my co-workers posts [did I mention I have the best co-workers in the world?]).

The seminar really helped me see the professional advantages of Twitter.  I’m not a fan of hard sell and I can now see how Twitter and Facebook can be used by business to build relationships – the cornerstone of selling services or products.  It also is a great way to know what your clients and potential consumers are saying about your company.

I joined Twitter that same evening.  I don’t expect to spend much personal time on it, but as someone who works in the technology field it was a good learning to set up my account and do enough tweeting to get a handle on it.

As I was setting up the account though it really struck me that the popularity of Twitter harkens back to about the mid-twentieth century when the party telephone line was still in use.  More than one household shared a telephone line, and another party could eavesdrop just by picking up the phone and listening.  When you first go into Twitter is might seem  confusing because you’re only hearing one side of the conversation if it’s part of a thread.  Clicking back and forth between the linked users though you can “listen in” to the conversation.  The only difference is on Twitter everyone using it KNOWS you’re listening in.  This makes for a good way to get out a message you want delivered, or listen to what others are saying about a subject.

This also got me thinking about the value of different skills and their use in different jobs. (More on this in a future post).  Twitter, Facebook, etc. can take up a lot of time, and perhaps not the best use of time for someone doing production work.  But there is indeed a strong call for companies to make use of these avenues to understand their market, promote the positive aspects of the company, and be aware of any negative so that it can be addressed.

Gloria
Twitter Semi-Convert