High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions

As you may know, I like to view my very-nearly-fifty-year-old self as all hip and early adopterish. I have an unnatural dread of youngsters snickering as I hold up my new-fangled thingamabobber and look at it over the rims of my glasses, saying something like “tell me again, what button I push to see the grandkids in their space pod?” So when I started reading about Pinterest, I begged an invitation and checked it out.

As it turns out, Pinterest can be a useful tool or a waste of time and energy, or both. I am finding it tremendously useful, but it took some time and tinkering to sift out what I really wanted to see and “pin” to my virtual pin boards. At first, I saw no point in looking through hundreds and thousands of pictures and picking those that struck my fancy. A lot of what I saw seemed like nothing more than an extension of the bumper sticker or the Facebook profile - one more way to show off a little and tell the world that one had read (and liked) “Bleak House,” or spent time in Uruguay. There were also hundreds of cute animal pictures, cute kid pictures, and inspirational sayings of various kinds, things that might be diverting for two seconds but I am unlikely to “pin” and revisit anything along the lines of LOLCats.

The beauty of a good “pin,” though, is that there is a narrative portion that can tell you whether a picture is just “for pretty,” or whether one can click through to a recipe for that cupcake, or directions for making wall sconces from Dollar Store funnels. For me, the recipes and how-tos have been amazingly useful. I admit that I “collect” pretty pictures of things that I like, moons, owls, birds, flowers, and Paris street scenes…images that make me smile when I am stuck someplace for fifteen minutes and want a reminder of the beauty in the world. That’s good, but that’s the fluff.

I can’t imagine being separated from my iPhone for even a day. Its intuitive features have become essential to my life.  But, now, with the application “Big Oven” I feel like my favorite room in the house, a kitchen, has been added to my screen. This is the BEST app that iTunes has to offer.  Of course, that is only my opinion.

Big Oven is a FREE app for iPhone users only, don’t ask me why it’s free but it is.

How about a little tour? Big Oven says they have 160,000 recipes and in another place on the site there are 170,000, who knows?  We all know how recipes collect and reproduce. (Unlike Al Gore, you’ll never get to the end!) My favorite feature is a random recipe that comes up and if it doesn’t interest you, you shake your iPhone and another one loads. Heck, I could do that all day and probably for years and never see the same recipe twice. Random recipes like Green Goodess Dressing.  Shake it again and up pops a recipe for Almond-stuffed pork chops and then a quick shake and now a recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies.  How very cool!

Every website has one...and so should you. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE the Internet. I make my living because of it. I've been shopping on it since Day 1. Used AOL before there was a World Wide Web when you had to dial-up to get on. Being married to someone known in our circle as The Man – because he can fix any computer problem – leads people to believe that I'm as tech savvy as he is. People are continuously surprised when they discover how low-tech I actually am. There seems to be a disconnect when I explain that I just work on the computer, I don't understand how it works. Sure, I can install software, program my iPhone and even add more memory to a machine in a pinch, but when it comes to setting up an email account, using a Blackberry, texting from my phone or posting a video to YouTube, I have less knowledge than a 5th Grader.

You won't find me on MySpace, Linked In or Facebook. Partially because I run three websites and want to have a life away from my computer...though I love it so... but mainly because I find the idea of "social networking" more than a little creepy. Is it really social if you're just typing on a computer by yourself?

If you haven’t heard of Ooma, you will soon. I discovered it because I was sick and tired of paying ATT&T for a landline we rarely ever used that cost us over $40 a month with no extras. We didn’t even have call waiting, which was nice for us, but the busy signal always freaked our friends out. At least they knew we were home even if they couldn’t reach us.

One day last fall I came across a message on one of my geek boards about a box that uses your current phone number and phones over the Internet. More research showed that everyone was talking about Ooma, a system that seemed to be as popular as Uma Thurman among the nerd community.  I was a bit skeptical until I saw over 75 positive reviews on Amazon. It seemed this system was exactly what I was looking for. Unlike Vonage a similar service that has a monthly fee, once you purchase the Ooma system (about $200), you never have to pay another phone bill again. That’s right I said NEVER.  Plus, getting to keep our existing home phone number (for a small fee) was essential. We’ve had it for 12 years and it’s the one number my wife can actually remember.