One of my biggest challenges in jumping off the diving board into the deep waters of blogging is my significant lack of digital and technical experience. Ask my kids about the day I got my first iPhone. They’ll tell you.

It wasn’t pretty.

I picked it up from Verizon just before closing, without any instruction on how to use it, and woke up the next morning in time for an early conference call for work. Being a few minutes late, my boss called, wondering if I was going to attend, and gave me the number to call in, which I promptly scribbled on a note pad. I hung up to make the call.

Where are the numbers?

Huge major problem ~ when I looked at the screen on my phone, there were no numbers! My old phone had numbers right there on the screen when I’d flip it open. All I saw on my new iPhone were little designs and symbols. I knew I was in trouble.

Panic immediately set in. I mean, serious panic. I realized I couldn’t call my boss to tell him I couldn’t call him. Huh???

Then I remembered I had someone under the age of 20 still living in my house. Needless to say, I woke my son up from a deep sleep, and shoved the number in front of him, pleading with him to help me.

Within 5 seconds I was on the conference call. Really?! Amazing that my son didn’t own an iPhone, so how the heck did he know where the numbers are?

Why of course. Doesn’t everyone know they’re hiding behind 3 rows of 3 dots? Still to this day, I have two questions. Number one, how do kids somehow know this stuff? And number two, how am I supposed to know it?

My common sense, or maybe the need to feel part of mainstream, tells me I’m not alone. There must be people like me who for some reason weren’t born with intrinsic knowledge of all this digital technology (and that includes tv remotes), nor the DNA to figure it all out.

So if you ‘get it’, I’m happily going to bring you along as I learn things that people under 30 were born knowing. This will be my contribution to the world.

Hence this category and post.

2 Small but Important tips

Have you noticed that many websites don’t have a ‘Home’ page anymore in the menu?

If you click on the title of the site it will always take you to the Home Page. Try it. You’ll see that little hand icon when you hover over the title (my name). And by the way, I did figure out that if your cursor is a little hand, that means you can click on something. No hand? Just an arrow? No ability to click.

Do you ever wonder why you sometimes see words that are colored blue and underlined?

This is called a link. If you click on it (with your little hand icon), it will link you (take you) to another page somewhere else. This is because the author wants you to see additional information. Some links create a whole new tab at the top of your screen, and some links change the tab you’re currently in. If that’s the case, just click the ‘back arrow’ at the upper left corner of your screen to get back to the page you just came from. Try it out here. Click on this link.

Anyone who helps me navigate our digital world is my hero! Feel free to let me know if these kinds of tips are helpful to you.

Thanks for visiting today ~ Carol ♥