Seniors / Boomers And Social Networking – My Thoughts

What Led Me To Write This

I read an article in the March 25, 2010 issue of the Broward, Florida edition of the Sun Sentinel newspaper, entitled “Social connections key during retirement”, by Janet Kidd Stewart.

I could not find it on the http://www.sun-sentinel.com site, but by doing a Google search for her I did find the same article, albeit with a different title, for the full story go to the following link:
(update: as of August 4, 2014 link no longer valid, could not find another copy of the article via search)

In the article she talks about Penny Hall, who “when she retired about 18 months ago, the 59-year-old had plenty of savings and retirement revenue from real estate investments, but lacked a plan for a social life”.

Further along in the article Hall is quoted as saying “It’s hard because everyone my age is still pretty busy with work”

My Thoughts

As I read this article, it came to my mind that computer user groups, are a great way for people like Ms. Hall to generate social connections, especially with others that are already retired, or soon to be retired.

I know that I have more social connections now, even though I am not yet retired, due to my involvement with two local computer user groups, and most of those in the groups are already retired, some for a good length of time. Others I know, are also members of more than one such group.

The article by Ms. Stewart, came on the heels of a presentation made at the Boca Raton Computer Society (BRCS), which I attended on March 17th. At that presentation, we were given an overview of what social networking is all about, and as I looked around the room I noticed that I was the youngest one there. Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter were the attention-getters, and the most discussed.

Conclusion

Computer User Groups are a great way for seniors / boomers, as well as those even younger, to develop social contacts, and keep up with technology at the same time. Not only are there specific meetings, most form some kind of social connection outside of the group.

So what are you waiting for, find a computer user group near you and get socially active:
Association of Personal Computer User Groups – Find User Groups <http://ugls.apcug.net/>

TWAIN (Not Mark)

Last night I attended the Boca Raton Computer Society, Inc. (BRCS) Hardware / Software SIG. (http://brcs.org/)

One of questions, related to scanners, was: Can someone explain what TWAIN is?

There was no internet access during the SIG, so it could not be looked up. There was a lot of speculation, the consensus being it is a machine language, used to communicate between a scanner and the PC.

I ran a Google Advanced search: what is twain -mark -mark site:.com

Here are some of the results that made some sort of sense to me:

http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/1209

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/glossary/f/twain.htm

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci213232,00.html

I also found the following through Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWAIN; they are a little more technical:

http://www.twain.org/

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I hope this helps anyone needing more knowledge about TWAIN.

If you know of any other information, that may help in understanding TWAIN and what it does, please leave a comment with a link below.

Styles and Word Processing

A Manual Word Processor (A typewriter)

Manual Word Processor

At the January 2010 Broward Personal Computer Association, Inc. (BPCA) general meeting Q&A session the subject of using styles in word processing came up.

The actual question was: In Microsoft Word, how do I stop it from capitalizing the beginning of each line?

In answer to the question, it was suggested that the reason for capitalization of the first letter of the new line is that she is using the Enter key as a carriage return, just like she would if using a typewriter. Upon opening a session of Microsoft Word on one laptop, and one of OpenOffice.org on another laptop, a few lines were typed in each using the Enter key as a carriage return, and another few paragraphs only pressing the Enter key as a carriage return at the end of the paragraph. Sure enough, once we turned on Show/Hide Paragraph Marks it showed that was exactly what was happening.

Now the thing is how to get her to stop using her word processor (it doesn’t really matter which one, as long as it supports styles) like a typewriter, and use it as it is intended, a way to process words.

Suggestion

Here is a suggestion, as well as some links to information regarding using styles.

Instead of worrying about what the document looks like, try using a plain text editor, such as Notepad, to just put down all your thoughts. Just write until you have everything out of your head and into the document. Once you have all this, I call it my very rough draft, copy and paste it into your word processor, and now apply your formatting (bold, italic, etc.), rearrange and edit your sentences and paragraphs, and apply your styles to make it look pretty.

Links

Some Links to check out regarding styles (mostly for Microsoft Word, but with minor adjustments should work with any word processor or desktop publisher that supports styles):

delicious.com search for microsoft word styles result:
Delicious has been shut down, as of June 15, 2017.

Results for style search at Tips.net:
http://www.tips.net/results.html?cx=003792548944738135704%3Am_k9gka3qx0&cof=FORID%3A11&q=styles&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=Search&siteurl=www.tips.net%2F#722

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Photo courtesy of: http://www.imageafter.com/image.php?image=b12objects052.jpg