Do you feel trapped by your place of work? Is the computer you use every day locked down tighter than the doors on a submarine? Are Facebook and Twitter considered “colorful metaphors” to the IT staff? Well, there may be some relief and a way to get back to the social networking world you desire. Firefox Add-Ons!
I recently went back to work, this time for a very large company with an IT staff dedicated to keeping things on total lock-down so we (the employees) can’t waste time or share corporate secrets via the internet or installed programs. What this meant for me was a return to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as my one and only browser choice. My first thought was “how bad could it be?”
Anyone who loves gadgets or new electronics has been burned before. You shell out your hard-earned cash for the “latest and greatest” widget and rush home, only to find that it doesn’t perform as promised or hold up for more than 6 months before it stops working. In an age of smart phones, universal remotes, netbooks, HD video cameras, etc. this can be an expensive and frustrating occurrence. Luckily, this digital age also provides us with the internet and the ability to research before we head out to the big-box, retail electronics store. The trick then becomes weeding through the information and determining if the article/site is an advertisement or an honest review of the product in question.
Over the last few weeks, I have written several articles on my switch from DirecTV to a TiVo Premiere setup. Yesterday, I received a series of questions from one of my readers (thanks Dave) and thought that the answers to his questions would make a great article. This way, everyone would benefit from the responses and maybe begin asking some questions of their own. His questions and my responses are outlined below.
Several years ago I was invited over to a friend’s house to check out the release of a new XBOX game called Halo 2. I hadn’t played video games in a few years and hadn’t played them regularly since I was a kid, but if everyone was getting together I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity. It only took a few minutes of watching the others play before I was really interested and convinced someone else to hand over a controller so I could play. Bam! I was hooked. Not only were the graphics and sound better, but this new generation of gaming allowed the “users” to interact with others in the room or over the internet. This changed everything.
How would you use technology to promote awareness? This week (March 8-14, 2010) is MS Awareness week! Over the remaining six days of this event, the MS Society hopes to spread information about multiple sclerosis to the general public. Educating the public about this chronic, often disabling disease will help bring in new volunteers, donations and eventually a cure for MS. Through this article, I hope to explore the ways I am using technology to send a message and I ask that you provide me with any feedback and/or ideas you have.
I was lucky enough to be part of a volunteer task force, created to implement a viral campaign for MS Awareness Week, and I found it both interesting and enlightening that the focus was on using social media to spread the word. Our discussions and meetings were filled with terms like social media, networking, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The very things that the average computer user spends doing every day. For anyone interested in helping to find a cure for MS (or any other cause for that matter), these tools provide a valuable way of spreading information in a fun, engaging way.
Games and personal computers have been linked since the earliest days of computing. My earliest interactions with computers were the hours spent gaming on the Radio Shack Tandy Color Computer, the Atari , the Apple IIe and numerous other systems. Movies released during these groundbreaking years, like Tron, War Games and even Big made an entire generation aware of computer gaming. Today, the platforms are more advanced, the technology has improved like we only imagined it could and games are available everywhere. From Facebook to the XBOX360, you can kill 1 minute or thousands of hours trying to beat that high score or simply make the hours go by.
Today, we will look at a few of the most addictive games I have played in the last year. These are very basic, easily accessible games that you can play in just a few minutes, if you can walk away after you’ve started.
Monday began our week-long review of the new Social Media Credit Score concept, developed right here at JumpstartMyPC.com. Today’s topic Who Sees Your Social Media Credit Score and Why? is part 3 of our look at the idea of a Social Media Credit Score and how it might one day (or currently) affect your life. We encourage you to look back at our last 2 articles (Article 1, Article 2), if you have not already read them, but here is what you’ve missed so far (flash card version).
For years, I have been a Google fan. I remember the day I first entered google.com and was stopped in my tracks by the white space that presented itself. It was… different! At the time, I think something like 70% of all internet traffic started at Yahoo.com, but their page was getting a little cluttered and distracting. I liked this new Google thing and I knew then that I had found my new entry point for the web.
Over the years, Google has added a multitude of services and I have tried many of them. Their products are always clean, easy-to-use and almost always FREE (which I like a lot). Because their products are FREE, I tried as many as I could find. Gmail, Google Reader, Google Chat, Google Calendar… The list goes on and on. Over the last year, I actually had to start a folder of shortcuts for all of the different services that I was using. I couldn’t remember how to get to half of them. Enter Google Dashboard.
Our blog posts so far have really covered a wide range, from “Defragging Your Computer” to “Facebook mentions.” If you have read more than one of them and know that our goal at JumpstartMyPC.com is to help PC users get the most out of their PC, you might be wondering how all these topics fit. Yesterday, I saw it all come together in a few seconds.
A friend of mine posted a YouTube video to Facebook. I clicked on the link to find it was a commercial from Norton Antivirus, and it was pretty funny. The content, writing and filming were all great but I was laughing for a different reason. The makers of Norton Antivirus were hyping their Norton Internet Security software, with no mention of purchase price or subscriptions. They were using this free advertising stream (Facebook) and the comedy of a quick, short video hosted on YouTube (also free) to market a product that will cost you, the user….
Do you feel trapped by your place of work? Is the computer you use every day locked down tighter than the doors on a submarine? Are Facebook and Twitter considered “colorful metaphors” to the IT staff? Well, there may be some relief and a way to get back to the social networking world you desire. Firefox Add-Ons!
For years, I have been a Google fan. I remember the day I first entered google.com and was stopped in my tracks by the white space that presented itself. It was… different! At the time, I think something like 70% of all internet traffic started at Yahoo.com, but their page was getting a little cluttered and distracting. I liked this new Google thing and I knew then that I had found my new entry point for the web.
