It's News to Me

In keeping with the spirit of the post I made about «Conquering Clutter» a few days ago, I'd like to alert you to an upcoming opportunity to recycle any old computers or peripherals you may have that are cluttering up your home. This coming Saturday, the 13th, the Staples in West Knoxville (near the Best Buy store) will be facilitating the collection and distribution of these old electronic relics to the benefit of several worthwhile charities in our area. Here's the link to the announcement of that event.

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When you want to show someone something on the Internet, you must tell them where it is located, just as you might refer them to the street address of a particularly attractive house that you noticed for sale in your home town. On the Internet the address you'd give them is referred to as the URL, or Uniform Resource Locator, which is technically a sub-set of the URI, or Uniform Resource Identifier, but for the purposes of this discussion I'll simply refer to the URL when talking about an address on the Internet to which you might want to direct your hypothetical friend.

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My friend Jane Hascall's husband Benny, who is only 60, suffered a stroke on December 6th. Fortunately he is recovering at one of Colorado's finest rehab facilities, the Craig Rehabilitation Center in Englewood, CO. With the assistance of Benny's daughter, Katie, Jane utilized one of that facilities' excellent services to create a web site where she posts updates on his condition. That way, his friends and relatives can be kept current about his progress by subscribing to those updates or just by periodically visiting the site. This solution is so much better than Jane's having to send out periodic emails to a distribution list.

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For the last week or so, I've been using Google Reader as my RSS Feed Reader rather than Bloglines about which I commented back on November 10. Both services do an adequate job of gathering the information for me to peruse, but I find I like the Google Reader interface better than I do the Bloglines interface. My friend, Mike Neel, has just the opposite reaction which illustrates I suppose that no one service is best for everyone.

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This may be in my future ...

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While visiting Carole here in Georgia for the New Year's holiday, I only have access to the Internet through a dial-up connection, and boy am I reminded of how thankful I am for my connection through Comcast. Dial-up access is agonizingly slow! It helps me understand why Carole is less enthusiastic about accessing the Internet than I am, even taking into account the differences in our level of experience with being online. The occasional problems she may experience caused by clicking on the wrong link are far more difficult to recover from than they would be if she had any kind of reasonable broadband connection. As they say, «you don't appreciate the water until the well runs dry.»

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My friend, Juan Gutierrez, asked last night «what is the best all-in-one printer to buy,» and I gave him the best advice I have probably ever given. I said, «you should ask someone who knows.»

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Apparently technology does have some limits.

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Long ago before the World Wide Web came to be, I, like many others, became fascinated with the fact that I could use my computer to communicate with people from across the country and around the world by participating in a BBS.  Using a dial-up connection, I would connect to a BBS System here in Knoxville and login to one of its SIGs (Special Interest Groups) called ILink Writers.  This particular SIG was populated by a diverse and talented group of people who enjoyed the act of writing about an almost unlimited number of subjects.  It was during this time that the writing of one Paul Moor, who has since that time become a dear friend for about 15 years now, first caught my eye.  Not all the writers in that group were professionals (after all, I was one of them), but all of them were quite skilled at their craft, and I derived hours of enjoyment getting to know them and having the chance to interact with them. 

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As I've mentioned many times, I love Skype. My friend, Paul Moor who lives in Berlin, and I talk almost every day using its computer-to-computer connection. During 2006, the good folks at Skype made calling any phone in the U. S. or Canada, regardless of whether the other party had Skype installed, free until December 31, 2006, and I've used that feature a number of times with good results. The sound quality is good and the ability to talk with my hands free to type or otherwise use my computer is something I really appreciate. In addition, I have used Hot Recorder to record some of those conversations and use them in audio blog posts.

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