The Technology Days
I am about to turn 30 years old. My family got our first dial-up internet connection the year I turned 18, which means that the internet has been an active part of my everyday life for about a third of my time on this Earth. Today the wifi network that I leach into from my neighbors who never bothered password protecting it downloads things thousands of times faster. My parents, grandparents, and even older aunts and uncles have never really understood computers, and I can see how that is. They grew up with electric typewriters and the only computers that even existed were the size of an entire building, which is unbelievable to the generation younger than me. People my age and younger grew up using computers every day and taking typing classes with models that today we would use as door stops.
I do not regard myself as a computer expert, but the older folks in my family think that I know everything there is to know. However, a few days ago I watched a younger cousin of mine playing a computer game that had just come out and played it at least twice as well as I would given equal time on the game. This made me feel kind of sandwiched in between two generations; one that can’t tell the difference between an optical mouse and a web cam, and another who breathed technology in from the moment that they were born. This made me feel like the bridge between them. Hopefully I can give each generation some insight into one another.
Older folks seem to be naturally distrustful of new technology. I would use the book 1984 as a metaphor to help you younger people understand how they feel; but that reference is lost on you. Suffice it to say that an extremely abusive government monitors and controls everything that a nation does in this book. You younger people generally know how to protect your information as well as what is and what is not possible to do with a computer. To them computers are magical machines that can do anything. They can lose their social security benefits and their credit cards the moment they log-in, no matter what methods they use to protect them; at least in their thoughts anyway. When computers first started being portrayed in popular media, they honestly believed that the things in Wargames could logically happen; something we think is absurd today. So the next time Grandma and Grandpa lose all of their favorites or need to update to the next version of Internet Explorer, try and think about where they come from technologically.
There are many tools one can use when trying to find good rankings with the various search engine tools. My favorite tool for this search engine ranking check software is the Advanced Web Ranking tool. It’s great to use for multiple sites, easy to setup and maintain, has tons of features… simply the best I’ve every used. Aside from just running the basic report and the ability to track each and every important keyword, you can set up different jobs within the software and have them run automatically. Now that’s fun to work with, and then you have the reporting.
The reporting feature within the Advanced Web Ranker is pretty killer, nothing short of everything I need to provide to those clients who really want up to the date information, ranking changes, especially for the time sensitive keywords for news stories or breaking stories around the world. Once the report is created in either Excel, PDF, or HTML, you can set a template to be used and have it automatically, yes, automatically to you and the customer. Change the date ranges, activate and deactive both search engines and various keywords also. A niftly little feature I like to use is to color coordinate the keywords into groups that make sense to you. Or suppose you’re trying to rank and check for a specific group of words for any given time, you can just colore them all the same color and it’s easy to separate them in the report and when viewing on screen.
One of the biggest complaints about young people is that they have no patience. But my question is how can we expect them to have any at all? The internet has been part of their lives almost since they were born. Instant communication to anywhere around the world has given them the ability to find out answers to any question they have. You had to rely on libraries and encyclopedias for information; they go online and find answers so quickly it makes your head spin. Take their internet and their technology away from them and they can hardly function. I realized the other day that a nephew of mine will never have to develop a roll of film; he can look at his picture with the camera the moment it is taken. Technology is a part of them and their development now; it is just as integral to their systems as breathing is.
If you’re looking to check the links back to your site and want some link tracking software, check out the link poplularity software by the same guys who created the Advanced web rank software I mentioned above. Easily find out who and what other sites are linking to your site, what type of keywords are they using to link to you and how popular the links are… Tons of very, very useful info on link popularity and something you want to use and check out soon and start making the links work for your site.
So that’s really what the difference is. Technology came into older people’s lives later, and into younger generations earlier. What that means is that we have different methods of coping with the world. Isolation and waiting for things is relatively normal for older folks, and networks and instant knowledge and gratification is normal for younger ones. Keep this in mind and we might all get along a little better.
