I plan to continue my technology theme and for regular readers start with an update on my website for the over 50’s (introduced in my last blog Creative Powers) and the ease with which anyone with a bit of technical knowledge can build one. I have now, again with assistance from my son at university, revamped the site completely using a new website builder called Weebly . You can judge the improvements for yourselves on Greywebwine. This new builder is incredibly easy to use and works on the basis of templates which you can edit by dragging and dropping them onto a page so as, for example, to include text and pictures. Creating sub and sub sub-pages on the site is easy and the result is a really professional look compared with my first efforts.
I have also succeeded in moving off the Weebly domain name which came with the site to a .com address I had registered with another provider Go Daddy. You can ask the service provider to this but, following very clear instructions available online from Weebly, I was able to log in to Go Daddy go to the relevant admin pages, alter one setting and check another and get the Go Daddy domain address to “point to” my website.
I did admittedly in best Jeremy Clarkson mode manfully ignore (a) an opportunity to send an email request to Go Daddy to make this change (I could just see that going wrong and leading to delay) and (b) a warning that changing domain addresses could be a rather frustrating task and so why didn’t I just register a domain address with Weebly. After all I told myself I am a technology lawyer and a member of SCL. In reality (and just to be I hope impressively technical for a moment) all I had to do was to alter the numeric IP address which underpins the word web address. I was also told it could take 48 hours by Weebly and 1 hour by Go Daddy to take effect. It actually took less than a minute.
This was an important step in my website’s life because a .com address has far more credibility in the online world and is easier to search for and therefore attract traffic to your website. We are now in the process of setting up Google AdSense to maybe generate some revenue from the site. I will probably keep my day job however until it really takes off!
And in addition to this structural improvement and adding content I have set up a social media site called Greywebwine Net link which you can also access from the front page of the reconstituted Greywebwine. I built this using wall.fm . This needs more users to take shape but the basic structure with chat pages and the ability to form groups is there and again quite easy to establish. So please as well as having a look at my revised website Greywebwine join my social media site Greywebwine Net – we could set up an SCL over 50’s group – and let me have any comments, feedback or shared experiences.
Which brings me neatly to my main technology theme for today. To what extent are emails and texts going to be supplanted by social media sites? Large companies like IBM and Dell use social media, in the first case to communicate with customers and in the second to share ideas around the world. In Fujitsu we are increasingly using social media in our sales channels and for internal communication. One large IT company Atos Origin has set a goal of abolishing email by 2014. Is this realistic or even sensible?
It took us professional people quite a long time to move away from letters and faxes to emails and attachments. Are we now ready to rely on Facebook or LinkedIn or even Twitter? I sort of sense not yet. If I look to my inspiration in this area, namely the next generation, they all seem to use a mixture of communication media. In the world of the 16 year old texts are the mainstream of their lives probably followed by Facebook and then emails. So it’s horses for courses. Collaborative working and social networking will really benefit from the shared world of social media. Email, texts instant messaging and some new means of communication we haven’t yet thought of will I suspect still have a part to play in our working and our social lives.
And occasionally, just occasionally, we may pick up the phone and actually speak to somebody, or heaven forbid go and see them in person and not just speak to their avatar or whatever other online presence they may have!
