Have you ever been at a store and seen something you want but don’t have the time or money to buy it at that moment?  Or maybe you’re driving past a house that has some landscaping that you like.  I don’t know how I used to remember that stuff, but ever since I got my iPhone, i’ve got a new way of capturing every idea I see that I like.

Admittedly this is not something that is limited to just the iPhone.  Any cell phone with a camera could do the same thing, but pictures just look awesome on the iPhone.  This is especially important if you’re really trying to capture the full beauty of whatever you’re trying to remember for the future.

Lori and I are in the middle of remodeling our upstairs.  Part of this process is pricing out different things at the hardware store.  I used to write this stuff down, now I just take pictures of the item with it’s price.  Once I get back home, I’ve got pictures and prices to work with.{/tabs}

This is especially useful if you like to price things online and compare it to what it would cost at your local store.  There has been many times that I’ve walked past something at Lowes, snapped a picture, looked it up at home and either bought it online, or bought it the next time I was out.

It’s weird but taking pictures of things in stores that I want to remember to buy, remember to price shop, or just as an idea for something I want to do someday has given me a lot of happiness.  I would always see those things before and have no way of taking the memory of it with me, and now I do.  At anytime I can flip through the pictures on my iPhone and see a record over the past 5 months of everything I saw that inspired me.

NOTE:  If you don’t know what news feeds or RSS feeds are, stay tuned for an article explaining them in detail very soon.

The simple definition of a news (RSS) feed is a set of headlines from a website that allow you to quickly see two things:

1. What’s been added to the website
2. A quick summary of each item added

This is important because it allows you to see an overview of what’s new without having to visit the website unless you see something that interests you.

What is Google Reader?

Google Reader is a website with built-in news reader capabilities.  You tell it what news feeds you want to read, and it collects them all together for you.  You can browse all your news together, or one feed at a time.  It’s looks a little like Gmail and is just as fast.

So why is Google Reader so great?  I thought you’d never ask.

Google Reader Is Fast

There’s many different ways to build a web application like Google Reader, but not every way will result in a fast, responsive site.  This is one thing that Google absolutely does as well as anyone.  Their design is very simple, and maybe a little plain, but their applications for the most part are as fast as anything else out there.  This is important to people on mobile devices as I’ll write about later.

Google Reader is convenient

Don’t know the the exact address of the news feed you want to read?  No problem, just click the "Add Subscription" link, and type in the address of the website it comes from.  Google Reader will find the newsfeed for you and add it to your list.

Google Reader on the iPhone

Shortly after the iPhone was released, Google created a special version of Google Reader just for the iPhone.  This, in my opinion, made Google Reader the "killer app" ( a geek term for the perfect program ) for the iPhone.  It reformats your news feeds into a format that looks and works great on the iPhone screen.  Because of this, and the fact that it’s super fast, I can catch up on headlines from 6 different websites and blogs in just a few minutes.

Speed

It’s worth mentioning in this context again how fast Google Reader is on the iPhone.  This is extra important because as some of you well know, the iPhone uses the AT&T Edge network for internet access when there’s no Wi-Fi available.  Edge is slow.  Really slow.  Think dial-up speed.  Then divide by two.  It’s that slow.  Google reader is BLAZING fast even on Edge.

Reformatted content

When you do see a headline that you like, past experience with the Edge network will make you think twice about clicking it on the iPhone.  Because as I mentioned before, Edge is slow.  Once you click on a link in Google Reader, you’re jumping off the fast track and into the slow lane of the internet.  However, the good engineers at Google managed to extend their speedy application to the websites you’re reading news from.  It will retrieve the page you’re clicking to, and display it in a format much like the rest of the news headlines.  It’s much faster than going to the website, and Google gets a big "Well done" for adding this feature from iPhone/Edge users like myself.

Switchable Interface

Need to add another newsfeed while on your iPhone? No worries, just scroll to the bottom of the page, and click "Classic".  This will switch you back to the normal Google Reader view temporarily so you can add more newsfeeds.  Reloading the page will take you back to the iPhone version.

The Bottom Line

Google Reader on my iPhone allows me to have the best of both worlds.  Staying informed without spending much time doing it.  The last thing I want to do is spend half an hour on my phone when I could be doing something else.  I no longer have to choose between reading headlines and having time for more important things.  Google Reader lets me have both. 

However, the more cluttered and unorganized your hard drive is, the more work you have to go through every time you need to find something.  This can severly inhibit your enjoyment of your computer.  Here are some common practices I use to increase my peace.

Temporary (junk) Folder

On every computer I use, I have a temporary folder where all my downloads go, and any other junk that I probably don’t want.  I make a strict rule that anything that goes in this folder is OK to delete at any time.  Collecting a certain level of junk is inevitable, so I find it’s best to draw a strict boundary around your junk area and not let it creep into the organized pats of your computer.  It’s easier to understand what this folder is for by listing what doesn’t go in there:

1) No documents I write or receive (unless they’re throw away documents ).

2) No files that I know I don’t want to ever lose

3) Nothing I access on a regular basis.

Documents Folders

I create one document folder for each area of my life.  Church, Work, Personal.  On Windows these folders typically go inside the My Documents folder.  Sometimes I also include a Miscellaneous folder alongside these, but I’ve found that most of what goes in Misc, probably belongs in the Temp. folder.

Pictures

On Windows all pictures I need go into Picasa. Other pictures go in my temporary folder.  On Mac, the same is true for iPhoto.  Any picture not worthy of keeping in iPhoto or Picasa is relegated to the Temporary folder.

Music

On both Windows and Mac, all my music collection is handled by iTunes so I have no need for organizing music files all over my Hard Drive.  I always turn on the option "Copy items to my music library when adding them to iTunes".  This makes sure that once I’ve added something to my iTunes libarary, I can safely delete it from the original location.

Email Attachments

Email attachments almost always go into my Temp folder unless they contain something I want to keep.  I have my email program setup to always save stuff there when I open it.

Following these rules helps me to keep my hard drive nice and organized which makes it easier to work smoothly on an everyday basis.  This kind of organization is essential to keeping my peace.

I recommend running the Windows Disk Deframenter tool about once a week.  It probably doesn’t need to be run that often, but this will ensure that your drive is running as efficiently as possible.

Click on the image below to learn how to run the Windows Disk Deframenter.

1. I deal with almost no spam (junk) messages.
2. When 10 people respond to an email I sent out, I see all those replies on the same page as the email I sent.  I can read all the responses together instead of in 10 separate message scattered throughout my inbox.
3. I spend almost no time searching through folders for old messages.
4.  I see no banner or flash ads while browsing the internet.
5. My bookmarks at home stay in sync with my bookmarks at work.
6. I can create awsome slideshows from the pictures of my band’s shows right on the web for friends and family to look at.
7.  My bill are automatically paid on time every month and I write no checks to make this happen.
8.  I can work on most of my documents and spreadsheets wherever I have internet access.
9. My computers never slow down from spyware or viruses.
10. I can find and listen to online radio shows (podcasts) about topics I care about rather than the drivel that occupies most air time on radio stations.

That’s just a few and it might not seem terribly important to you depending on your interests, but next time I’ll list the things that I don’t have to deal with, and that might get your attention.

Anyone who’s ever raked their yard will tell you that not all rakes are created equal.  If you’ve got a bad rake, the job will take you twice as long.  It doesn’t have to be a broken rake to make your life miserable.  But some of us approach anything new with a "don’t fix what ain’t broke" mentality. 

But let’s look at the raking example again.  If you were using an old rake from the 70’s it would probably have individual metal tongs, and a wooden handle.  And it probably works.  It ain’t broke.  But a new rake will have plastic tongs that aren’t as sharp so leaves don’t get stuck on them.  It might have a fiberglass handle that’s just as strong, but twice as light.  And it would have a bigger span so you could rake more leaves in less time.

The person who uses the new rake, AND learns how to use it correctly will spend less time raking and more time doing whatever else they want to do.  Similarly, the people who learn how to use more modern email systems like Gmail spend less time sorting message, less time filtering spam, and more time doing whatever else they want to do.

The point is this.  If you live your whole life not fixing what ain’t broke, you will do more work for less results, you’ll deal with frustrations that other people won’t have to.  And if it’s your business, you’ll make less money for more time.  Don’t be afraid to learn something new.  Don’t be afraid to experiment with the new tool.  Find out if it’s better, but don’t just reject it because it’s new.  In the end, the only person who’s losing is you.

I’m just going to list some things that you should make sure you get, and then I’ll explain why.

When buying a new computer you should make sure it has the following:

1. At least 1 GB of memory.  If you can afford it, get 2GB of memory.  This will have the single biggest effect on how fast your computer runs.  Both Macs and PCs need at least 1GB to run normally.  With 2GB, they will both seem much faster once you start using them for real tasks.  You may not do that much with a computer now, but when you get a newer one, you might be surprised what you want to do with pictures, maybe even video.
2. At least a 2.0 GHz Core Duo processor.  Both Celeron and Pentium processor designs are on their way out.  Core Duo processors are going to be used for the next 5 - 7 years.  Software that you buy will run faster on these processors.
3. At least an 80 GB hard drive.  If you do anything with digital photos, music, or video, 80GB is a minimum size.  If you do a lot of any of these things, aim for 160GB or higher. 
4. A dedicated graphics card ( not "Integrated Graphics" )  This sound fairly technical, but it’s actually simple.  It just means that the computer you buy should have a dedicated card inside that is solely responsible for sending the information to your monitor.  Cheaper computers in the past have used "integrated graphics" which uses a low-powered card that’s built right into the main board of the computer.  These computers will have serious problems with newer operating systems like Windows Vista.
5. 802.11g, or 802.11n wireless built in.  You may not have wireless now, but chances are you will within the next 2 years.  WiFi is exploding in popularity and shows no signs of slowing down. 
6. No Microsoft Works.  This is a very old set of tools that Microsoft offers as an alternative for their ridiculously overpriced Office tools.  There are free alternatives that you can use that much better than Microsoft Works.
7. Windows XP if possible.  Almost every new computer will come pre-configured with Windows Vista.  If at all possible, see if you can get Windows XP instead.  There are too many reasons for this to list here, just take my word for it.
8. No Bundled Internet service deals.  This isn’t as popular as it used to be, but it’s still around in some places.  They’ll try to sell you a cheap computer, bundled with a 2 year contract to some company for internet service.  This is a bad way to save money, because then you’re stuck with that company even if the internet service is poor. 

This is just a basic list, but if you stick to these things, you’ll get a good computer that should last you. 

When most people go to buy a computer these days, they’re confronted with a massive list of options from which to piece together their "dream" system.  The problem is that their "dream" system is one that they don’t have to think about.  Unfortunately, until engineers can find a better way to describe computers, learning a few things about how they’re made can be useful.  Today, I’m going to explain very simply the difference between a computer’s hard drive, and it’s memory (RAM).

Memory -vs- Paper

Your memory is just like a computer’s memory.  It’s fast.  You can recite information much faster when you have it memorized, and a computer can modify documents faster when they’re in it’s memory.

The problem with our memory though is that we sometimes forget things.  A computer’s memory is the same way.  When you close a program it "forgets" anything that it had in it’s memory for that program.  But if you’re typing up a big document, you don’t want to lose all your changes.  We all know what happens if we try and close a program without saving the document.  The computer asks us if we want to save it, or lose our changes. 

Most of the time we click "Save". When we do that, the computer takes what it has in it’s memory, and writes it down on the hard drive.  Just like we’d write something down on paper to save, the computer puts things on the hard drive that it doesn’t want to forget.  It’s not a perfect metaphor but the principle is the same. 

Size

So why are hard drives so many more GB than memory (RAM)?  Let’s think about a filing cabinet filled with old bills.  Do you know the amount of every one of those bills?  Of course not.  But if you needed to know the amount of some bill from two years ago, you could look it up and memorize it.  Your computer doesn’t need to be able to hold all of your documents in it’s memory at the same time, just the one’s that you need to work on at any given moment.  But most of us have lots and lots of documents, music files, pictures, etc…  So the computer needs a big filing cabinet (hard drive) to organize them.

So the next time you’re shopping for a computer hopefully this will help you understand what you’re choosing.

The iPhone makes text messaging really, really, really easy. And it looks great too.  Put those two things together and you’ll find yourself sending a text message instead of calling more often than you’d think.  Text Messaging means different things to different people, but here’s why it matters to me.

1. I can’t always talk but I still need to reach you.
   I could be at a movie, in a meeting, in Church, or in some otherwise quiet setting where talking is not appropriate.  If it’s not something I absolutely need to talk to you about right at that moment, a text message is a great alternative.
2. It goes straight to your phone.  I could just send an email, but I don’t know if your phone even has email.  And if it does, you might not check it.  With a text message, the message goes straight to the phone, and the next time you pick it up to use it, I know you’ll see the message.
3. It’s saved as a conversation.  The iPhone displays the text messages between you and someone else like a conversation.  Like any long list of things on the iPhone, this list can be scrolled.  Until you clear this list, it will keep every text message from that person in this view.  Need to remember what someone sent to you last week.  No need to look through all your text messages because all the texts from that person are kept together.  I can’t emphasize enough how awesome that is if you can’t stand looking through long lists of unrelated things to find just one thing.

Peace Factor: Convenient

The way that the iPhone presents text messaging can affect your mood because it’s just so fun.  I get a little smile every time I use it because it’s like a cool little toy that you just really get a kick out of.  It has provided me and my wife a way to stay in touch when we’re not around our computers, and when we can’t call each other.  For someone who likes to know that someone is getting the message I’m sending, this amounts to a big deal.  File this one under convenient…

Music

If you’re a musician, and you have your own music that you want people to be able to play on your website, there’s a couple of things you can do. 

1. Start your own band page on MySpace.  MySpace allows you to upload 3 songs to your profile that they will host for free.  Unfortunately, people have to go to your myspace page to listen.
2. Put the mp3s on your own server, and user one of the freely available flash mp3 players like the JW MP3 Player to play the music on your site. (very technical and easy to screw up).

Option 1 is very easy and not at all flexible, but more and more bands are doing it.  There’s a lot of other services out there like MySpace that allow you to do the same thing, but more people know about MySpace and will discover your music there.

Video

Video is a lot easier.  Thanks to the success of YouTube, video hosting sites are popping up all over the internet.  YouTube is still the most popular, so a good start is to have an account there.  However, if you’re not concerned with people finding your videos on YouTube and only plan to show them on your own website, Google Video is a better choice because there’s less "junk" on Google Video than on YouTube.  You can get to Google Video by visiting http://www.google.com/video and look for the "Sign in" link.  If you have an account with any of the other Google services, this account will work there as well.

Once you’ve uploaded your video, it will take some time for it to be processed.  After it’s ready to watch, just visit the page where the video is shown, and look for something that says "Embed Video".  This is a common feature to most video hosting sites now.  They generate a little snippet of text that you can put into your web page that will cause the video to show up there.  That way people can watch the video right on your site but you don’t have to figure out a way to put the video on the server, and write the code to make it show up on your page.

So I just got done sending an invoice to a client for some work I did.  In the past I would have had to walk downstairs to my office, log onto my computer find the document, make a pdf out of it and email it. But right now I happen to be on my wife’s computer upstairs, and as I started getting ready for bed, I remembered that I need to send this invoice.  Instead of walking downstairs, I simply logged onto Google Documents, found my invoice, saved it as a pdf and emailed it, right from this computer where none of my documents are stored. 

I’ll go into more depth about each of the Google Documents products later, but some of you could benefit right now from checking it out.  Here’s a brief overview.

Imagine that every time you used Microsoft Word and you saved your file, it was saved somewhere on the internet.  You would never have to worry about losing it, it’s never stored on your computer, but you can always get to it on the internet, just like any website.  Now imagine that every computer you’d ever use had Microsoft Word installed.  This means that you could not only get to your documents, but edit them on any computer.

That’s basically what Google Documents does for you, without one very important, and expensive part.  Microsoft Word.  And Excel. And now PowerPoint too.

Google Documents allows you to create and edit 3 types of documents right inside of your web browser.  Word processing documents (like you make with Microsoft Word), Spreadsheets (like you make with Microsoft Excel ), and most recently Slideshows (like you make with PowerPoint ).  Here’s a couple of screenshots of what each type of document looks like while you’re working on it right inside your browser.

Word Processor

Spreadsheets

Slideshows

There’s only one thing to be aware of.  Google Docs does not do nearly everything that MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint does.  But the question is this.  For the price of FREE, can you give up things that you probably don’t need?  For me the answer is yes.  I barely scratch the surface of what MS Word is capable of, so spending the money on it would be a waste.  For 90% of what I do, Google Docs does everything I need.

Just like all of Google’s services, this is completely free.  If you already have an account with Google, either for Gmail, or iGoogle, or Picasa, you can sign up for Google Documents with the same username and password.  It’s as simple as going to http://docs.google.com, entering your username and password and you’re done.

I can’t wait to talk about this more…. 

"How do I clear programs out that are not used and are taking up hard drive space?"

Raise your hand if you’re a little unsure of how to get rid of a program once it’s been installed on your computer…

The Problem

Installing programs on your computer if you’re running windows has become a very easy process.  A special program called an installer puts all the files where they need to go, and then like magic, the new program appears in your start menu.  But unfortunately, getting rid of it when you don’t want it anymore is harder to figure out.  So most people just let programs accumulate on their computer.  Well that can change today, because today we’re going to take a look at the "Add/Remove Programs" feature of Microsoft Windows.

Add/Remove Programs

In order to get started, you have to make your way to the Windows Control Panel.  You can get there from the Start Menu.  I’ve included two pictures from windows XP that show you how to get there depending on which style of Start Menu you have, regular, or classic.

Once you open the control panel, look for something that says "Add/Remove Programs" and click on it.  The Add/Remove Programs window will open and should look something like this:

All you need to do is click on the program you don’t want, and a button will appear underneath it like this:

Click the "Remove" program and an uninstaller program will start up, ask you a few questions and you’ll be done!

What if that doesn’t work?

Occasionally, something will have gone wrong and a program cannot be removed automatically using this tool.  If this happens, the only thing you can really do is to delete the folder where the program was installed.  Nearly every program you installed will have a folder somewhere in C:\Program Files\ .  You simply have to locate the folder where the program was installed and delete it.  BE VERY CAREFUL TO PICK THE RIGHT FOLDER.

Then just find any shortcuts to that program either in the start menu, or your Quick Launch Toolbar, right click on them and delete them.  Occasionally, some shortcuts will be left behind even when you remove a program automatically, and you’ll still have to delete them.

On top of that, some automatic uninstalls leave the folder behind where the program was installed.  It’s usually empty, or with just a few files, but either way, it’s safe to remove these folders once the uninstaller has run it’s course.

What if my program isn’t in the list?

If the program you want to get rid of doesn’t appear in the list of programs in the Add/Remove Programs window, something has probably been messed up and you’ll have to follow the same procedure that I described above, as if the automatic uninstall didn’t work.

As I’ve mentioned before, Firefox is a great alternative to Internet Explorer for browsing the web for a lot of reasons.  One reason it’s becoming so popular is because there’s lots of little "Add-on" programs that work with Firefox.  One of these "add-ons" is called Adblock Plus and it does exactly what the name implies.  It blocks every ad it comes across and it updates it’s list of things to block every time you start Firefox. 

Let’s take a look at how to get Adblock Plus working on your computer..

Get Adblock Plus

1. You have to install Firefox on your computer.  You can download the program at http://www.getfirefox.com.
2. After you’ve installed Firefox, fire it up (that means start the program).
3. Go to the Adblock Plus page on the Firefox site - here 
4. Click the "Install" button on that page
   
5. A window will open asking you if you want to install Adblock Plus.  Click the "Install" button on that window.
   
6. After it’s done installing, you’ll have to restart firefox, so close it down and fire it back up again.
7. When you restart Firefox, you’ll be asked to pick from a list of servers for Adblock Plus to subscribe to.  This is not some sort of paid subscription, this just means "Where can Adblock Plus get the list of things to block from?"  I just choose the "EasyList" server and that has worked fine for me.

Browsing with Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus will install an icon somewhere on your toolbar.  It has two different looks.

When Adblock looks like a stop sign, it means that it is "On", and ads are being blocked for whatever page you are looking at.

When Adblock Plus is "Off", it looks like a circle.  This means it’s not blocking any ads for the page you’re looking at.

You can tell Adblock Plus not to block ads for certain pages, or even entire sites by using the little arrow next to the icon.  Clicking on this arrow will show a menu.  To keep Adblock Plus from blocking ads for the page that you’re looking at, click the "Disable on this page only" item.  To keep Adblock Plus from blocking ads for the entire site you’re looking at, click the "Disable on  (name of site here)" item.

You may be asking "Why would I ever want to turn ad-blocking off.  Well as unfortunate as it may be, there are some sites that you just can’t browse with Adblock doing it’s thing.  Any video site that feeds you commercials between videos will not work correctly.  For example, NBC puts full episodes of shows like "The Office" and "Heroes" on the NBC.com website for you to watch for free.  But they show you commercials several times during each video.  If Adblock is "On", it will block the commercials, and you’ll never get to watch the show because the website will just sit there and do nothing.

So anytime you come across a page that doesn’t seem to be working right, you can simply disable Adblock for that page and refresh the page ( press F5 in Firefox ).

Once you’re up and running you’ll notice that the internet looks a lot cleaner.  Here’s just one example with a before and after picture.

"On my laptop, how do I get an icon for outlook next to the start menu?"

This is a common problem that a lot of people have. Fortunately it’s an easy fix. The first thing to understand is that the row of icons beside the start menu is called the "Quick Launch" toolbar. It allows you to put a few icons in the space beside the Start Button. It makes it faster to launch those programs because their icons can never be covered up by any windows, and it’s faster than searching through the Start Menu.

Here is how you can add icons to the Quick Launch Toolbar…

1. Make sure that the Quick Launch Toolbar is on. If you see any icons right beside the Start Button than the Quick Launch toolbar is turned on. If you see only gray, right click on the gray area right beside the Start Button and make sure that the "Quick Launch Toolbar" is checked in the list of toolbars in the menu that pops up. Here’s a picture of what it should look like.
   
2. Make sure that the Taskbar ( the gray area that extends from the Start Button to the Clock on the right) is Unlocked. You can see in the image above the menu item that says "Lock the Taskbar". If this has a checkmark next to it, the taskbar is locked, and you should click it again to unlock it.

   All this means is that you can resize the QuickLaunch toolbar to make it wider so that it can show as many icons as you put into it. The little gray and white vertical line to the right of the icons in the picture above are what you would use to make the Quick Launch Toolbar wider.

3. Open the Start Menu and find the icon for the program that you wish to have an icon in the Quick Launch toolbar for.
4. Right click on that icon and select "Copy".
5. Close the start menu by clicking anywhere in your desktop.
6. Right click in an empty area of your desktop and select "Paste". You’ll see a new shortcut to that program appear on your Desktop.
7. Just drag that icon down into your Quick Launch Toolbar and you’re all set.
8. Delete the icon from your desktop ( when you drag it to the Quick Launch Toolbar, a copy is made, and the one on your desktop stays there so it can be deleted. ).

The video below shows you how this is done.

But what many people don’t realize, is that the blue "e" is not the internet, it’s just a program on your computer. It’s a "browser", a program that does one thing. It shows you websites, one page at a time when you ask for them by typing in addresses or clicking on links. It’s called "Internet Explorer" and it’s made by Microsoft. Some of you probably didn’t even realize that you could choose which program you want to use to look at webpages, and that’s why many people’s computers have been badly infected by viruses and spyware.

You see, not all browsers (programs that can show you websites) are made the same. Internet Explorer in particular has had very many weak spots that allowed people to write websites that could do nasty things to your computer when you visited their site. And since most people used Internet Explorer, many, many computers became compromised.

The good news is that you don’t have to use Internet Explorer if you don’t want. There are several free alternatives. I’ve listed them below. My favorite out of the bunch is Firefox.

• Firefox - www.getfirefox.com
• Opera - www.opera.com
• Safari - www.apple.com/downloads

Toolbars

One way that computers get infected with spyware is when people install add-on toolbars to their browser. Often these toolbars put programs on your computer that track what you do on the internet and send it back to marketing companies. In addition, every toolbar you install has the potential to slow down your browser. I’ve seen cases where someone had literally installed 5 or 6 add-on toolbars for Internet Explorer. There are so many things that these companies promise, but there’s one simple rule that you can follow that will keep your browser safe.

Don’t ever install toolbars.

Conclusion

Hopefully you have a better idea exactly what a "browser" is after reading this. It’s just a special kind of program for showing websites. And there’s more than one browser that you can use. Internet Explorer is not the only one, and it has many weak spots that people can take advantage of, so I recommend switching to Firefox.

The good news is that you’re not alone. There’s a LOT of people who feel just like you do. There’s more of you than there are geeks like me. And that’s why it’s absolutely critical that we do our best to explain something as simple as "What is the internet" in really basic terms. Why? Simply because it’s very dangerous for a lot of people to use something that they don’t understand especially when it connects them together. Think of a bunch of people who know nothing about driving a car, all driving about the city at the same time. The more people there are who don’t know what they’re doing, the more dangerous it is for everyone. Not convinced yet? You might be after your computer dies from viruses that you could have prevented. When your credit card number gets stolen right off your computer. Or when your kid posts your home address on their MySpace profile.

Scared yet? You should be. What you don’t know can hurt you. The good news is that you don’t have to be an expert to eliminate 90% of the risks associated with using the internet. The basis for this is simply understanding what the internet is.  Let’s take a look…

The Phone-net

Think about your telephone. When you call someone, are you going online? Are you connecting to some kind of abstract thing called the Phone-net? Of course not. You just pick up your phone and you call someone and that’s all you care about. However, behind the scenes, your phone connects to a big system of interconnected phone lines, and in many ways, picking up your phone and calling someone, is like visiting a web site on the internet.

Here’s the truth about the internet. It doesn’t exist. There is no thing called the internet. It’s not some big box, or some building, or even the little blue "e" on your screen. All the internet really amounts to is the ability for computers to talk to each other and all speak the same language. Why is this such a big deal?

A common language

Think about trying to call someone in France who doesn’t speak a bit of English, and you don’t speak a single word of French. Sounds like a very productive conversation doesn’t it? Now imagine trying to call someone who lives in a building without telephone wiring.. Oh wait, you can’t because the phone lines don’t go there. It used to be the same way with computers. There was no universal language for them to talk to each other with, and some of them had no way to speak to other computers at all.

Several decades ago, some very smart people decided that computers could be more useful if they could all be connected and taught how to speak a common language. Computers are a little easier to teach than people, so in a remarkably short amount of time, every computer that was born, knew how to speak the same language as all the other computers that it connected too.

There’s only one missing piece, and that’s the role of the operator. In the old days, there was a real person who connected your call, now it’s all done by computers. The same thing happens when your computer wants to talk to another computer. Instead of having to keep track of the internet address of every computer in the world, it simply sends a message out to a bunch of computers that act as the "operators" of the internet, along with the question is has to ask, or the message it’s trying to send. The operator figures out how to get it to the right computer. But even still, all that’s happening is computers talking to each other. It’s that simple.

Ask and ye shall receive

When you talk to people, you can small-talk, talk about yourself, or you can ask questions to find out what they know. When computers talk, all they do is ask each other questions and get answers. Here’s a sample conversation that my computer had today:

• Anthony’s Computer (to operator):
  I’m looking for the computers at CNN, and I want their home page
• Operator Computer (to CNN Computers):
  CNN Computers, I have a caller that wants your home page.
• CNN’s Computers (answering operator):
  Here it is ( sends over the home page for www.cnn.com )
• Operator Computer ( to my computer ):
  Here is the homepage you requested from CNN.
• Anthony’s Computer ( to operator ):
  Now I’d like the page with the story about Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize. Can you
  send me that page?
• Operator Computer ( to CNN Computers ):
  Now I would like the page with the story about Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize.
• CNN’s Computers ( answering ):
  Here is that page ( sends the page to the operator ).
• Operator Computer (to my computer):
  Here is the page you wanted…

For as long as you keep browsing the web, this conversation keeps going on, back and forth.

There’s a bunch of things that the computers ask each other for, and send back and forth, but the 3 most popular things are:

• Web Pages that you look at in a web browser like Internet Explorer
• Emails that you read inside an email program
• Instant Messages that you type and send inside an instant message program.

I’ll explain each of these in future posts, but for now, I hope that this will help you understand a little more about what the internet is, and what it isn’t. It’s not a place, it’s not a thing, it’s just a description of how computers are connected and speak the same language.

The Basics

• Mozilla Firefox ( with AdBlock extension )
• Gmail (for web based mail )
• Mozilla Thunderbird for POP3 or IMAP email.
• Google Docs - Online word processor and spreadsheet creation and storage
• Picasa - photo management for Windows ( from Google
• Picasa Web Albums - online picture album storage. Integrates with Picasa nicely.
• iLife - Complete suite of tools for Mac for working with photos, music, making movies, dvds, etc..
• Google Calendar - online calendar for keeping track of your life.

Advanced Tools

• Quicksilver - Swiss army knife application for Mac that makes starting programs so fast you’ll never want to user your mouse again.
• Launchy - Quick application launcher for Windows, does application launching just as well and just as fast as quicksilver.
• SmartFTP - If you can put up with the "trial period ended" screens, this FTP program is tops for windows.
• Textpad - My favorite text editor for windows. Recordable macros and syntax highlighting make this a must-have.

The picture you see to the right shows you the end result of many back-and-forth emails between me and the good people at Grosh Guitars.

The messages appear to accumulate together and are treated as one "grouped" message when you’re looking at all your messages in your inbox. This works as long as no one modifies the subject when replying.

Here’s a common scenario. You send an email out to a group of people from church, or a sports team, or your team members at work or school. One by one, they reply and before you know it, you’ve got 15 messages all centered around the first email you sent.

In most email programs trying to organize these emails is difficult at best. With Gmail conversations, it just happens. As the emails come flooding back in, Gmail determines that they’re related to the first message you sent by the subject line, and even if 15 messages have come in since you last checked your mail, they will show up as one "grouped" message.

In the picture above, you see that the new conversation appears as one message, but with the number of messages in the conversation in parentheses. To view the entire conversation, I just click that one message and I can see the entire group of related message together. These messages seem to be glued together in GMail and they always show up grouped together.

For some people, this is a dream continually coming true. For others, technology glitters a little less brightly.

Many people in America today work too much, sleep too little, play too rarely, and are massively over-committed. For a lot of these people, using technology can be like having another job. For all their attempts to join the 21st century, they’re rewarded with a computer that ages faster than they thought possible, viruses that spread just by reading an email, spyware that their kids installed while pirating music, and a myriad of devices that they once thought would make their lives easier, but have only served to reinforce their idea that all this technology is more trouble than it’s worth.

In some way, people like me have been the problem. I’m a geek. I’m like a raccoon drawn to anything shiny. If it has a screen, some buttons, and somewhere to plug in a cable, I’ll spend an hour just figuring out what it can’t do. People like me have often preached the gospel of tech simply on the basis that it’s just awesome. In some way we’ve succeeded. The entire country seems to be obsessed with tech even if only to keep up with what’s perceived to be “normal”.

For those who have felt left out of the technological revolution, for those who can’t avoid tech, but wish they could, and for those who are burned out on the tech-because-it’s-awsome adrenaline rush, I offer a perspective that hopefully will be refreshing, and educational.

I believe that the result of a person interacting with technology should be more life. Peace, Joy, Happiness. The elements of life that most people wish they had more of. I’m fully aware of how technology has robbed some people of those things, and the purpose of this blog is to show people how technology can allow them to experience life in a more peaceful, happy, joyful way.