Geeky Granny

Geeky Granny is enjoying the discussion centering around the introduction of cRANKy, the search engine for the older crowd. Without focusing on the silly and somewhat insulting name, Geeky Granny is prepared to give a big thumbs-down to the concept and the idea behind this new search tool, but not for the reasons Mr. Arrington enumerates.

While Mr. Arrington is quite right when he asserts that the over-50 crowd isn’t comprised of neophyte babes-in-the-woods on the Internet, he misses the larger point. The effort on the part of the EONS group is admirable; namely, to first create a social network for a targeted group, then use their metadata to create targeted search results for them. However, such a model assumes that age groups should remain homogenized and separate without mingling with other generations or sharing wisdom, opinions, information, and conversation with them.

Geeky Granny believes that to remain young at heart and in mind, it is essential that she not be isolated from the larger population which includes many young, creative and fresh thinkers. Why, the theme Geeky Granny uses on this site was created by a young person who could be one of Geeky Granny’s wonderful children. She does not care to share views with people who agree with her and think like her. It is much more interesting to be a part of the world-at-large, in life and on the Internet.

What is lacking for many of us approaching the middle and (dare I utter it?) elder years are ways to make the Internet accessible in the face of failing eyesight, hearing, arthritic hands, and other aggravating and somewhat inevitable products of age. iPods still have ridiculously difficult and visually-based controls, computers still rely on keyboard input, voice commands are unreliable and not yet fully developed. The collective geekery of our generation must be applied toward evolving the Internet toward one that is accessible to the youngest, the older, and the eldest among us without difficulty and with equal access.

(Geeky Granny is also pleased to say that while she is a granny and a geek, she doesn’t quite fit the demographic for the Eons set just yet).

Technorati Tags: eons, cranky, accessiblilty, design, internet

Today’s candidate for Geeky Granny’s Grand Prize is Trent, who writes the simple dollar, a blog about finances and financial management (a topic for all ages — Geeky Granny finds herself quite broke at the beginning of this New Year).

Trent has learned many lessons in his time blogging, and chronicled them in a series entitled Building a Better Blog for 2007. Topics range from Being Yourself to Being Lucky.

Geeky Granny believes that Trent’s success is purely the result of hard work, rather than being lucky and applauds his efforts and willingness to share with others.

Technorati Tags: the simple dollar, trent, blogs, blogging, building a better blog

Geeky Granny wishes to congratulate David Pogue on his recent post about online etiquette (or lack thereof). He has taken notice of the way even “ordinary people” (Geeky Granny assumes he means people who don’t obsess on every single news item winding its way up Techmeme or Megite’s River of News) tend toward rudeness, extremely poor grammar, and a lack of even the most basic understanding of what the term “discuss” means.

It is true, but Geeky Granny wishes to remind Mr. Pogue that ordinary people are influenced by what those with high Pagerank do, and might be persuaded to be kinder and gentler if they saw others doing the same. Geeky Granny would like to encourage the parents of children on the Internet to teach them some basics of human behavior, on and off line before all hope is lost for reasonable discourse.

Technorati Tags: David Pogue, Megite, Techmeme, blogs, blogging, civility

Geeky Granny has been a longtime fan of Todd Cochrane’s Geek News Central podcast, despite Mr. Cochrane’s deficiencies in the grammar department. However, lately Todd has been a bit cranky about a number of topics, which is a concern to Geeky Granny. She has always enjoyed Cochrane’s ability to present news and even controversy gently, with a sense of humor.

Perhaps Mr. Cochrane missed the lovely Molly’s hard questions about IE and web standards, or perhaps he was simply focused on hard questions about podcasting without regard to the rest of the Web. Whatever the case, Geeky Granny has some suggestions to ease her favorite Geeky News Guy’s Consternation:

• Try posting the questions you would ask AHEAD of the conference
• Read what Robert Scoble wrote in response.
• Read it again.

(P.S. Learn to use the word “have” in place of the word “of”, so that your sentence that reads like this:

…he should of asked how come Microsoft launched Zune when it was clearly not ready

….will read like this:

…he should HAVE asked why Microsoft launched Zune when it was clearly not ready

The second sentence is much clearer. Geeky Granny wonders if a little polishing and blog copyediting might boost Todd to a point where he can ask Mr. Bill Gates those questions himself next time?

P.P.S. Todd, there is already a Cranky Geeks podcast. Perhaps they should invite you to join them?

Technorati Tags: todd cochrane, bill gates, robert scoble, molly.com

Geeky Granny is a little disgruntled. She reads over 300 blogs every day addressing topics like education, web two-point-oh, medicine, politics, people and life -on-the-web and the more she reads, the less she likes.

As a Frequent Reader of Many Things, Geeky Granny is an expert blog consumer. Being quite literate, she understands what she reads and even has the sense to apply it. It is a source of frustration to her that those who give the advice are often wont to follow it.

Take the recent dustup between Michael Arrington and Dave Winer over Arrington’s somewhat backhanded slap at the NY Times, for example. (Not to mention Jeff Jarvis, Rafat Ali and Arrington’s subsequent tussle with his UK counterpart over nasty names being bandied about on a blog post about LeWeb. Geeky Granny is at a loss to understand what could possibly motivate Arrington to whine over the woes of blogging after being so quick to lash out.

Geeky Granny has this advice for Mr. Arrington: Take 10mg Valium, pull the plug on the computer, and take a looooong walk in the wilderness. Breathe air that isn’t filtered by CPU fans and be grateful to have what you have. Try giving what you want to get for a change.

Update: One more tiny bit of advice for Mr. Arrington: It’s extremely bad form to post and then delete it, especially when Geeky Granny has taken the time to link to it. Please be considerate of your incoming linkers. They are, after all, partly responsible for that Google Mojo you have going.

Technorati Tags: michael arrington, techcrunch, dave winer, LeWeb, geeks behaving badly