Flikr

I became an unsuspecting user of Flikr when they took over all of the old Yahoo Photo accounts a few years back. Nothing good in life is free, so now I get the upgrade message every time I log in to look at all of my prehistoric digital photos. I went back in as part of this exercise and saw a hodgepodge of swim meets, kid's triathalons, and even Michael Phelps pictures when he was here in Sacramento right after the olympics in 2004. My favorite is the one above of my youngest working her magic on a 5-year-old boy at a swim meet. She's 13 now, and I would definitely intervene if I found her behind a tent today.

The hardest part of all these new technologies is:

a)Remembering where I actually have photos/emails/blogs stored and
b)trying to remember the magical combination of keystrokes that serve as my password.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

This is going to be fun for me, since my days as an early technology adapter are long behind me. When the internet and digital photography first hit the mainstream, my life changed in big ways, but then my learning curve slowed considerably. After programming one to0 many cellphones and remotes, I took the easy way out and started handing things over to my teens who actually still enjoy tinkering with new devices. I've used Facebook and Myspace over the past few years to get a snapshot of what my kid's world is like, but other than that computers are just devices to pay bills, make travel reservations, or research restaurants in faraway cities.

I'm really great at the having fun part of learning, but should probably take the other seven habits to heart as well...