A plea

The reason I started this blog is the reason I am writing this post. I want to learn about the internet and how to use it to its best advantage. One of the good things about it is blogging, it seems to me. But I am not clear about how to get people to my blog. I have signed on to Twitter – another new area that is puzzling but I am getting there – and I am trying to learn about RSS feeds and this and that, and although I am getting better, it is a slow process. I am following people much cleverer than me on Twitter, and they are very clued up, but the problem remains. I don’t want to be told just that I should tweet my plug, use pug ins, widgets, RSS feeds, subscribe to Digg.it and Flick.r and other such neatly names tools. I need to be told what they are and how to use them properly. I am, my dear Watson, finding it not at all elementary, and continue my research on your and my behalf dear reader. I shall put here what I discover and encourage you to contribute, like Printer’s Devil here, whose comments are just the ticket. More of the same sort of thing please

And today I learnt a lot…

1  that there are plenty of people like me out there – who want to use new technology as she should be used but have only a blurry idea how.

2  that these people – and me too – don’t want to link to some nutter in Missouri who wants to tell me how slaughtered they feel in 140 characters (see below).

3  how to use twitter –  and that it has benefits. The principle behind it, which no teenager or technotuner will tell you (not to be horrid, but because they think you must know so it’s not worth saying) is that it is a conversation in 140 characters. Walk into a party, and find people you want to talk to. You don’t thunder up to someone and say ‘can you tell me all you know about hydrangeas’ but you might skirt about the borders and enter or initiate a conversation about shrubs that you can share.  This made sense to me.

4  What a computer widget is : on a web site it is a web gadget, a bit of html code that tells the site to do something (link to other blogs, put in a googlemap, insert a contact form…), not a grommet the plumber might screw on to a pipe from the basin.

5  Some meanings of words on blogs – which I will tell you about next time.  eg Blogroll (boom boom), tagging, tweets, RSS feeds…

Till next time.

SH