Comments on: Open Thread: Have You Turned Your Family Into Web Workers?

By: Adam Darowski

Adam Darowski — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:07:27 +0000

My mom doesn’t even have an email address. :) Heck, I’d love to share a family calendar with my wife. But nope… I’m the web guy.

The most frustrating thing is hearing mom/family say they haven’t seen pictures of the kids in a while. It’s like… hmmm… they’re all on Flickr! Just look! :)

My Twitter pals know far more about my life than family does.

By: Lisa M. Hendey

Lisa M. Hendey — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:50:38 +0000

The one place I would love to have my extended family online is at Twitter – I’d love to get tweets throughout the day from my brothers and sisters, just to know how their day is going. We live all over the country and talking on the phone is tough due to different time zones and schedules. I think it would be fun and a bonding experience, but alas, none of them are into Twitter or Facebook yet.

By: Talking Books Librarian

Talking Books Librarian — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:58:58 +0000

To some degree family and friends are involved, but not as much as me. That must be the librarian in me! :)

By: Colin

Colin — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:31:44 +0000

I’ve convinced my all family to switch to gmail.

Not only is booking “family events” via google calendar a breeze, I don’t have to rush over and bail my mom out when:

a) she can’t find an email
b) outlook crashes
c) shes somehow screws up her SMTP settings, even though they are already set

and bonus: I’ve stopped receiving those stupid, viral 100mb Powerpoint attachments from her.

woot woot

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:59:55 +0000

I moved my mother off checking her POP3 email via Outlook on to Gmail last weekend. Why? 1. She was complaining about the fact that she didn’t have access to her contacts when she was at work and 2. Outlook froze up on her once again, and she was just as tired of asking me for help to get it working again as I was of giving it.

I told her that Gmail would easily solve both her problems and that she would still have access to her old email from the Gmail window while transitioning her friends and contacts to her new @gmail.com email. That finally sold her and the switch was painless.

I then showed her the benefits of being able to chat with me anytime via gTalk, and that we can share calendar events, etc. All good. :-)

By: Patrice Chollet

Patrice Chollet — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:54:26 +0000

Thanks for sharing this. In my experience, web working brings about diruptive productivity improvements. Our focus is then moving from an application specific paradigm to a content specific one. What’s important is the content and the fact that you can share it and interact with it.

I believe in leading by example. Therefore, I show around to my family and friends how I work and how cool it can be!

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:37:38 +0000

Totally agree. The only web-based constant in my family is email and everyone uses a different service. Even when I got my parents on IM, they would write dissertations as if it was Instant Email.

In the end, I think it’s about showing them what’s broken in what they do. If something doesn’t appear to be broken, most people won’t look to fix it…