Ten to fourteen of my waking hours every day are spent in the media vacuum of the café. Actually, it has been kind of refreshing. I probably would have gone completely crazy this election cycle if I had been as plugged into the overload of media hype as I was in 2004.
But the thing is, the AOL j-land expulsion had one unforeseen complication for me. Though I hate to admit it, logging on to the internet through AOL at least gave me a glimpse of news headlines several times a day. Wedged in there among the ten tons of ads, pop culture overload, self-help fluff and general crap, there were usually one or two links to meaningful stories containing real news. Silly as this sounds, I kept informed of current events through AOL's home page.
When AOL booted us, I changed my home page to the Gmail page, thinking that would make sense, since the reason I logged on to the internet several times a day was to check my mail. Unfortunately, I realize now that I don't just want to check my mail. I want to catch up on the news. I want to see my local weather forecast. And I want to see if I have mail. All on one page. Things I had been accustomed to getting on the AOL home page for the past ten years.
I suppose that if I put some time and effort into it, I could find a different home page that will do all these things for me. But I don't have the time, and I don't have the energy to expend the effort. Actually, I don't appreciate that I have been forced to find the time and make the effort. Or languish in a sorry state of news deprivation.
Just one more example of the thanks we got for being loyal, long-term AOL members…
When you have a couple of minutes, check out this link to set up your google homepage to hold the things you want to see when you log in.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wikihow.com/Set-Up-a-Google-Personalized-Homepage
Take a few minutes and set up iGoogle. I get NPR and other stuff like that I want without the stuff I don't. You're much more techy than I am, so if I can do it, you can.
ReplyDeleteYou can try logging onto yahoo too. Their news is a little "fluffier" and doesn't cycle through a set of windows but it does have news links on it.
ReplyDeleteThank you, ladies. I took Charlene's advice and set up my own iGoogle home page. It's quite satisfactory. :-]
ReplyDeletea day late and a dollar short...I was gonna give you the same advice.
ReplyDelete