Sunday, November 23, 2008

Another Round of Thanks to AOL

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…

5 comments:

  1. 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.
    http://www.wikihow.com/Set-Up-a-Google-Personalized-Homepage

    ReplyDelete
  2. 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.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You 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.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you, ladies. I took Charlene's advice and set up my own iGoogle home page. It's quite satisfactory. :-]

    ReplyDelete
  5. a day late and a dollar short...I was gonna give you the same advice.

    ReplyDelete