Posts Tagged ‘camping’
10 Reasons Why Your Mom WILL Use Google+
Robert Scoble wrote a post about why your mom won’t be using Google+. If you read my post from last week, you know I’ve had the ability to play with Google+ for a bit now, and I have to disagree. Why? Well, I’m a mom. And I use Google+.
1. I love Circles. The argument seems to be that non-geeks won’t understand circles and won’t use them. I can think of many reasons why they will. Let’s say you want to vent about your inlaws or your job or pretty much anything you don’t want the whole world knowing. You can easily just send a message to your friends complaining (make sure you disable the share option) and you don’t have to worry about the world knowing. (Yes, I know they can still screenshot it, but if they are your friends, do you really think they will?)
2. The mobile app is beyond easy to use. I downloaded in the car on the way to a camping trip, and used it in the car (Need to add that I was not driving). I was able to easily have the picture appear in my stream (it was a picture of how full my van was packed!). It was a great test post and I have even been told how great the pictures looked on Google+ versus Facebook. They just have a much more crisp look to them.
3. Hangouts. If you are like me (a mom) and your family lives far away, this is a great feature. I can talk to my sister and my parents (who both live 4 hours away) and they don’t have to be at the same house! We can be a family together even though we are in 2 states. It just makes it easier to get online and talk. As long as I can write directions on how to use it, my parents (who aren’t all that tech savvy) can figure it out.
4. Simple interface. Makes writing direction to use things much easier (see above). Remember the saying, Keep in simple stupid? That’s what Google did with this interface. Simple makes it much more friendly to nongeeks.
5. Adults are here. This is exactly what the doctor ordered for us stay at home moms. Facebook limits you to your friends. On Google+, you can expand your horizons and follow those who you may not personally know however find interesting. You can have adult conversations with people who may have opposing viewpoints and you don’t have to worry about whether or not somebody you knew in high school is going to read your insightful comment.
6. One stop shopping. Moms need our lives to be as simple as possible. We are busy. I like having my email, social networking, documents, etc all in one spot instead of having 20 bookmarked sites to do the same thing.
7. Sparks. This looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so “when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.” If your bored, have a go in there 
8. With a Google+ account, you get unlimited photo storage on Picasa. I love being able to take a picture with my phone (which I have available to me most of the time. I don’t normally carry my camera all too much), upload it, and not have to worry if I’m going to exceed my storage space. And who doesn’t like free?
9. You control your privacy unlike Facebook who doesn’t bother to tell you that they sold your information till after the media catches it. Google Plus also makes it easy to control your privacy settings. You don’t have to dig through 20 menus to get there.
10. I’m here, and your mom loves me. Why wouldn’t she want to hang out where all the cool people are?
Related articles
- Google + (mythoughtsideasandramblings.com)
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Worst Week Ever
I’ve been busy, so I’ve not gotten a chance to post this. However, here we go . . .
Our worst week ever start on June 25th. We were heading to Wisconsin for our first camping trip as a family. Everybody was excited. Except for the car. We go to turn on the car and all we heard was “click click click”. Now, remember that our other car is a Prius. A hybrid. Let’s just say you can’t jump off those (actually, if you look at the owner’s manual you can, but to replace a Prius battery it’s like $5,000, so we weren’t about to try it). I found a neighbor home (which is amazing in the middle of the day), and we tried jumping. No can do. Nothing worked. Now, at this point, we are all in the van and its packed. We are screwed. I took Bill’s car and ran and got a new battery. While I was gone, Bill took the old one out. Luck was on our side at the battery store, and I bought the last battery they had and drove home. Bill puts the battery in and the radio and most of our electronics in the van were out. Bill figured it was a fuse, so we got and in the car and went.
We weren’t even driving an hour, and Madison had to go to the bathroom. We stopped at a gas station and I took the kids to the bathroom. Since we were there anyway, Bill filled up the car with gas. That ended up being a good thing. For some reason, everything worked after that. We thought we were in the clear. Little did we know –
Friday night it stormed. That wouldn’t be so bad except we were in a tent. And there were 50 mph winds. At one point, Bill and I were holding up one side of the tent. The good news is that the tent didn’t tip over and we stayed dry. Saturday night it stormed. However, Sunday morning was the whopper. Here are a few pictures:
Good times. At one point, we were lifting the tent, so the stream could go underneath. Sooo you’d think this was the end of it — not quite.
We get home and Madison is covered in mosquito bites. It’s about 8:50 pm and I ran to Walgreens to get some AfterBite. What I didn’t know was that they had mopped their floors and didn’t put up a wet floor sign. You can guess what happened next. I didn’t fall but I twisted my ankle (and ended up at the dr Monday to make sure nothing was broken). But my week got even better on Tuesday.
Bill and I were sitting at dinner and he goes “Lisa, your eye is really red”. Well, I ended up at the eye doctor that night, and I had pink eye too!
Thankfully, the rest of the week went better!
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