Musings of Old Man Joe

There and back again!

facebook

Thoughts

By 2 Comments

Photo by Markus Winkler on Pexels.com

I made my first website in the 1990’s, it was absolutely terrible as I really had nothing to say, yes that may still be the case but I ask you to be kind!
I was living in Korea town in Los Angeles, great noodle shops $8 dollar bowl with all you can eat Kimchi. Life in some ways was good. I worked in security for fifteen years until 2020 and pandemic.
I did enjoy my job and I do miss the people I worked with, I intended the website business to be something I could do when I retired as it would be a working from home thing.

2020 brought many changes, personally they brought frozen shoulder, loss of home of fifteen years, early retirement from security job, move to Ireland from Los Angeles.
I hear you say that’s not bad, and moving to Ireland has been great. But with the lockdown and having to leave our home in Los Angeles it took well over a year to figure out we were suffering a withdrawal of some kind.

Our life here in Ireland is better and there is no denying that. But that’s not what I am mean when I say withdrawal. 99% of my family are from this town I am now living in. If I throw a stone in the centre of town I will likely as not hit a family member.

But we have friends in Los Angeles that we have known for twenty or Thirty years who if I met I can give them a big hug and catch up.
I don’t think we realised for a long time we missed that.
It was better for both of us once we realised what the problem was. We are better now and looking forward to visiting California in November.

So what I do now is make websites, I am self taught and my skill set is improving all the time. The funny thing I have discovered is as a freelancer I have to do everything involved in the design aspects of the website. It’s not just the case of putting stuff on a page, there is the Brand, logo and having to manipulate images. It’s moved me in the design direction which is interesting.

The other aspect of the learning website design is that allot of people pay allot of money for websites and they were robbed. On the other hand there are instances where a business decides to try and save money on a website, maybe they decide to manage it themselves and not pay a person to manage it for them. If it’s a business that takes money through the website as a store or subscriptions beware on trying to save as that can come back to bite.

Every week people try to hack into my websites, I have security in place and multiple backups. My wife has learned over the years the term backup, she didn’t do that much before she met me.
I have two solid state drives and cloud backups. Some stuff is too important to be lost. I recently updated my wife’s website as she has her second book of poetry coming out in August. I also have another website coming soon for a client in Town. It’s a groomers and I hope maybe next week to pop it up.

Lot’s of businesses here use Facebook as a online presence. I understand this as it’s free, but the reason it’s free isn’t because Facebook is benevolent, they make money advertising on your business page. Maybe they show the other business in town that do the same thing as you. If you have a brick and mortar store would you let a stranger design your shop window. Search engines will in the end pick up your facebook page but they won’t unless you are searching for the name. If you sell burgers and search for burgers in an area it won’t bring up your facebook page, but it will bring up a website. A website is the store front the whole world can see (except china and Russia, North Korea and a few Arab speaking countries), but it still leaves quite allot.

When it comes to business and anything where money is involved I suppose it comes down to trust. And that’s a hard one to create unless you can give it time and have some people who can speak up for you.
Over a year ago I was talking to an Author who wanted to update his website, there were many pages and I think he thought I was going to charge him a fortune to retype the pages again. It was after we parted ways I figured that was his issue, Of course now I could tell him there is such a thing as copy and paste. But it just goes to show you have to trust the person you’re dealing with isn’t going to screw you over or at least be honest with you.

The world is a crazy place at the moment, the war in Ukraine, and the rise of Fascism in the United States. It makes me worried for the future, I hope my friends in the United States are safe and getting ready to vote

I thought I would finish with pet pictures!

Left to right Jade & Blossom
Left to right, Daisy 20 years old, & Poppy 15 years old.

When I die, who will I leave my cloud content to?

By

cloud computing

Like many people these days I have purchased movies and shows through the cloud and I have content on a server in many places I have never visited nor am I likely too.

I like the convenience of having stuff I can access on my devices anywhere I like, it’s cool. I was very reluctant to just go all cloud as I am still the fan of having a hard copy of my media. It’s a trust issue and although I have committed quite a bit of money to cloud only purchases not being able to just download a copy to a hard drive does still perplex me.

Obviously I am not the first person to ask this question, and although I have all my images and the important stuff backed up. I get the impression many people tend to have allot of stuff in the cloud and not too much backed up. And my thinking on this is really in the future when society has moved to a much more integrated online connected society. As easy it seems to be these days to get your account hacked and more often I hear about credit cards and pins have been hacked. Purely because the banks in the USA don’t want to spend the money on a more modern system that could protect the consumer much more. Yes I mean smart chips that have saved banks in Europe millions of dollars.

In the world of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and many others, are the pictures I upload still mine? Are the movies/TV shows I cannot download to my computer just a rent? Or because I clicked yes on a new privacy agreement because I wanted to get to lunch; have I signed my stuff away? And when I die can I leave my movies/TV shows in my cloud to who I wish, or when I die so do my purchases. I don’t remember clicking on that!

Why are phones getting smarter and people dumber?

By

phone etiquette
phone etiquette

If I post a video to YouTube, and it ends up on some Facebook page, is it right for me to blame anybody but myself? Or maybe I just don’t know the implications of using the technology in front of me.

There have been so many changes in tech in the last few years it’s really hard to keep up with the change. The only thing that seems easy is the latest great phone, computers have to some extent moved into the back room. I am writing this on my computer, but I can as easily do it on my phone, pay bills make dinner reservations, update and even video chat with family anywhere with a web connection. One of the bigger questions for me in this tech world has always been.

How do we use technology wisely?

I have recently been very displeased when I hear someone, co worker or just a person on public transportation talking very loud on the phone or listening to music. I just don’t understand why using a headset or text wouldn’t be considered a polite alternative. And if this is the future why aren’t we teaching the future tech users how to coexist in the world without pissing off the person next to you? Or is this something that we will have to program into the devices as people are too dumb to know the difference?

Not too long ago I remember this thing called phone etiquette, giving your name when you called before asking for whom you are trying to reach.

If you called the wrong number you would say sorry wrong number before hanging up.

Talk clearly and don’t shout as it’s rude, and never slam the receiver down as the person on the other end may still have their receiver next to their ear.

Do we ever see a person leaving the table if they must take a call, not much these days; even if they did let the company know they may have to take a call.

And as far as I am concerned the only thing allowed on trains, planes, taxi’s is texting.

I don’t want to seem like a grouch, and I truly love the tech world and look forward to new innovations. But why do the phones get smarter and the people dumber?

Security in the cloud, and the impact of Social Media on us!

By Leave a Comment

instagram

In this new mobile social electronic instant update world we are getting used to seeing and reading about all the things our friends are doing almost at the same time it’s being done. This is great for the people who are always out doing stuff and have lots of things to share. Of course there will always be the competitive side of things and not everybody goes on safari or cave diving. Some may enjoy reading and listening to music, personally I prefer the more tranquil pursuits!

Recently the ever pressing how does social media make money with us as the commodity came back! This time it was Instagram  and the backlash was substantial. I myself cancelled my account and I won’t be opening a new one. There are many ways to do the same thing today, no one app or site has the monopoly and should remember that!

How are the social media sites supposed to make money while providing the free service? This is the quandary that may bring about the demise of many of the companies that dominate the social media scene today. Just providing social media doesn’t make money, however popular it becomes. Facebook has been struggling with this issue, compounded by the fact most of the users are using the mobile version, which is the future of all social media traffic.

I will pause here to make a prediction! In the not too distant future I believe we won’t need the sites like Facebook or Instagram, as our devices and technology adapt we will be able to share with our contacts directly from our devices; no middle man needed! Could probably almost do it today, but were waiting for the world to catch up and for systems to be compatible as always!

This whole social media and cloud computing brings me to my question regarding cloud computing in general. I am in favor in principle of the cloud as it does bring our digital content to our fingertips with what ever device we use to access the network, and it is an excellent back up of our data. The internet should be considered a public forum so don’t post anything you wouldn’t want to be public, even if you post it on a private site. Never rely on one service to back up your life as it is too hard to replace once the inconceivable occurs and your data gets hacked. Cloud computing forces us to upload personal data just so we can function in the new cloud world. Is this data being stored reliably?

While in many cases I feel this is reasonable I am concerned that with all the different services all using the data we use to identify ourselves in this new digital world. The idea that our online persona is being looked after securely leaves me feeling nervous! As with any new technology there is a time before the bugs have been fixed, and because the bug in this case are stored on a server in another state or country. How can we expect there not to be some sort of accident some time in the future. And as anyone knows who has their identity stolen, coming back from that is difficult, as society looks to your online persona to identify who you are!

I keep a back-up of all my important data on a external drive set up as a raid system, this makes sure I lose nothing and it’s not networked so it can’t be hacked. I would highly recommend this sort of personal back up even in the new cloud world. I am also concerned that considering how important our personal data is in this new mobile social networked society. That there isn’t more emphasis on educating the youth on what to upload and protecting their online persona from data theft. Just because you grew up with it and know how to use it doesn’t mean you understand the dangers if you don’t look after yourself.

I like the modern mobile society, it brings one kind of interaction that I love and that is with distant family. On the flip side I think it has driven people who in the past may have gone out to become more distant and lonely. Texting should enhance conversation not replace it! And there is a lack of etiquette in the USA regarding mobile devices that should be addressed with education soon I hope. Japan would be a good place to look as they have always been a few years ahead of us in this regard.

Have a great day and stay safe!

Digital Privacy in a Mobile World.

By 1 Comment

There are changes going on in our society. In the news we are focused on the religious political battle. But there are other changes going on, just a bit more subtle.
The tech revolution started more than a decade ago. It moves in slow steady increments for a few years, then something happens & we have a leap forward.
Windows 95 was a leap, as was windows NT for the tech administrator. Mac OS X was a leap, as was the iMac.
In recent years the leap was created by the iPhone.
In 2007 the phone industry in the US was given CPR and we moved forward about four years. Up until then I would look in awe at Japan and the wonderful phones that we would never see in north America.
So here came the iPhone. Whether you are Apple, Android, the iPhone was the start of the biggest change in how we use tech in the last fifteen years.
Now tech is much more mobile, the network providers have been led by necessity, kicking & screaming to spend vast sums of money improving their networks.
With improved web access we have Facebook, Google + and other social networks at our fingertips. These social networks have in the past, been questioned & accused of not looking after our personal information properly. Over years systems have been developed to protect our data.
The weird thing is although I see people worry about their personal data, very personal things are uploaded to these social networks. It makes me wonder what a person who grew up with these networks considers personal data. Is it just account settings.
Personally I have always felt that anything posted on the web should be considered public. Because if you feel that strongly you should probably not post it in the first place.
As more of our info becomes fodder for advertising & targeted selling. Where is the line now? I know it’s moved recently. Every time I accept a new user agreement I’m sure it’s to facilitate the control & use of my data. As a modern connected people, are many even aware of the lack of privacy. Or even the fact that to enjoy the new social technological world, it is necessary to give up so much privacy. Don’t get me wrong, I love tech & I hope the social networks continue to keep us connected to friends & family. But we need to be more responsible for our web presence. It can’t just be left to the networks.
The latest trend is cloud computing. Which does seem to be a natural next step in mobile computing. There are many advantages. Smaller networked devices that don’t need large storage capabilities with access to large amounts of data.
But as we have seen, what happens when the network has a problem. I am a big believer in backing up. Learned the hard way many years ago. And today with reasonably priced external drives it’s very easy. Technology is always in a state of transition. Only when something becomes so normal that we no longer think about it is the transformation complete.
Have a nice day!