You can do IT in later life - 58

You can do IT is a regular feature of laterlife.com aimed at trying to help laterlife visitors make the most of Information Technology on or off the web. 

Jackie Sherman who runs the You can do IT Question & Answer section is an IT trainer and author. Jackie has spent her career in education and specialises in teaching IT to adults. Her courses for adults include such topics as MS Office, the Internet, e-mail and basic web page authoring.  

Jackie has also written several books - you can find more details about these by clicking here. Jackie has also been running a course specifically for over 50s.

Via laterlife.com Jackie aims to particularly help those new to IT and the web to build up knowledge and confidence, so no question is too basic. At the same time she will cover Q&As for the more experienced user. 

So if you would like to ask a question of Jackie, or if you have discovered something which may be of interest to others in making the most of the web, then she would love to hear about that too. Why not email her jackie@laterlife.com

Google Services.

In case you only use the Search Engine Google for simple web searches, I thought you might like to be updated on the variety of services the website now offers.
 

1. Finding pictures: If you click the word Images on the main page, you can look for just pictures, rather than websites containing mentions of your keyword.

For detailed searching, click the underlined words Advanced Image Search. You can now choose a specific file type or size of image as well as limit the search to particular words.

2. News: Clicking the News link will allow you to find out what is going on around the world or just in the UK.

3. Discussion groups: Google now offers links to Newsgroups via the Groups link which have been set up to allow people to communicate by e-mail to others with similar interests. Work down through the categories to find a suitable group. You can read what is being discussed or join the group and receive messages to which you can 'post' your replies. If you are interested, you could even start your own group.

4. Shopping: Cashing in on the large number of shopping and price-finding channels, Google has now set up Froogle. You can sort by price and will avoid finding websites that do not offer products for sale.

5. By clicking the More label, you open up a whole new world of services.   Here are some of the most useful:

6. Local tradesmen: When looking for a plumber, window cleaner or roofer, you can now use the Local service. Type in your trade and location and you will get addresses, links to their websites and the location on a local map.

If you look at the links on the More page you will see that you can also search scholarly texts (Scholar) , university websites, pay for questions to be answered by an expert (Answers) and search through categories of topics (Directory). In time, Google are likely to add a vast number of new categories as they try to cater for more specialist interest in using the Internet.

                          

View previous editions of YoucandoIT for more useful Questions and Answers

 

For a wealth of books on the web and IT generally, visit Amazon and under the books section select Computers and Internet.

Don't forget to visit the general laterlife features section called laterlife interest

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