GENERATION MAPS
Whether your Thanksgiving resembles “The Simpsons” or “The Waltons,” it’s inevitable that some cousin or other will mention in a tryptophan-induced stupor that everyone at the feast should be linked on the Internet.
It’s a nice thought, and quite possible on several levels--from basic e-mail to highly decorative family Web sites complete with photographs, message boards, birthday/anniversary calendars and even virtual recipe boxes.
But before you get too ambitious in your homespun plans for virtual togetherness, remember that the more ambitious a scheme, the more work and time it will take to maintain. And no family Internet plan should be so complicated that the non-techies at the table who are willing to at least try to participate will find it impenetrable.
Also complicating family plans are differences in hardware. You might have a Pentium III hooked up to a DSL while Uncle Bernie has a vintage Mac Performa with a 28.8-kilobit-per-second modem.
So, even if you are a tech whiz who could easily cobble together a complex site with all the bells and whistles, think of this as an exercise in family dynamics. Otherwise, your spiffy family Web site might have about the same life span as a “dot-com” that designs butterfly ballots.
Here are three strategies for a family Internet presence, from simple e-mail--which can be wonderfully sufficient--to the creation of a modest site that can be accessed with relative ease.
This was the original reason the Internet was created, and it remains its most efficient means of communication between people. If your household has Internet service, you already have an e-mail address. You might need more than one, though, if other people sharing the computer want private addresses for their mail.
That’s no problem with some Internet service providers, which allow multiple e-mail addresses on an account for no additional fees.
For example, the standard America Online dial-up pricing plan of $21.95 a month includes the use of as many as seven e-mail addresses.
Much of the fun of keeping in touch with relatives on the Net is through sending group e-mails that go out simultaneously to everyone in your group. In fact, you can create different groups--perhaps one that includes only siblings and another for all relatives.
But here’s the tricky part. Unless you all happen to be getting on the Internet at the same time and sign up with the same provider, there is a good chance that many in your family will be using different e-mail programs, each with its own procedures for setting up groups.
Luckily, the procedures for setting up groups on these different programs are for the most part not difficult. But it would be prudent to assign the most tech-savvy person in your family group the task of making sure everyone is comfortable using group e-mail on his or her particular service.
Of course, members of the group also will be able to send individual e-mails to one another or outsiders. Just make sure you don’t accidentally send the e-mail griping about Aunt Fannie’s holiday fruitcake to Aunt Fannie.
And as members of the family get more savvy about using e-mail, they can move on from just text and start sending one another attached photographs or links to Web sites of interest.
Instant Messengers
Let’s say you and your sister happen to both be surfing the Web at the same time. You would never know that you were both online unless you were using one of the hugely popular instant messenger services.
Not only would this messenger let you know sis was on the Net, you could start up a chat with her, sending messages back and forth.
Two popular messengers are from America Online and Yahoo, and both are free.
After testing them both, we found the AOL messenger service--commonly called AIM--a bit easier to use, at least from a home computer, although Yahoo Messenger worked quite nicely. (If you are using a computer at work that is protected by a security firewall, you might have trouble using these messenger services. Your computer network supervisor might be able to help.)
To get the AOL version, visit https://www.aol.com and click on AOL Instant Messenger. At the top of the page, click on New Users Click Here, and the system will guide you through downloading the software and registration.
During this process, you will be asked a crucial question: whether you want messenger automatically turned on whenever you sign on to the Internet.
If you check that box, anyone who also has AIM and has you on his or her notification list--commonly called a buddy list--will know you are signed on.
It’s a personal choice, but sometimes when I am on the Net, I would rather not be bothered by messages, so I leave that box unchecked. When I want to become “visible,” I just double-click the AOL Instant Messenger icon on my desktop.
If you want to try the Yahoo version, go to https://www.yahoo.com, click on the Messenger icon near the top, and it will take you through the download process.
Once you are signed up and the software is engaged, you make a buddy list of all the family members or others you want to be notified about when they’re online. If they show up on the list, you can click on their name and send them a message. It’s like meeting someone by surprise on the street.
Family Web Site
Now we get into treacherous territory.
There are lots of tools available on the Web that aid in the making of a simple, personal Web site that can contain text, pictures and some links. But a truly useful family site needs a good deal more interactivity--a bulletin board for discussions, a calendar accessible to all and a way for everyone to easily add photographs and other items.
Several Web-building sites say they can help you set up exactly this kind of family-friendly site “in minutes.” After trying several of them, we figure they are measuring minutes in Neptune time.
In addition, training all the members of your family group to use and contribute to these rather fancy group sites would take the kind of sensitivity and education that would put you in line for the diplomatic corps.
We were ready to give up when we discovered SuperFamily at https://www.superfamily.com that enables even novice Web users to build and use a private group family site.
Not only is it easy to build, but it also allows everyone to post pictures, start discussion groups, keep a common calendar and even compile a family recipe box.
There are three main drawbacks to SuperFamily, however.
It’s about as aesthetically pleasing as a loan document. That’s the drawback of it being so simple.
The site is slow. Even on a Pentium III with a high-speed connection, clicks to various parts of SuperFamily involved a wait that could be as long as a minute.
Finally--and this is the least of the complaints--the site is advertisement-driven, so you’ll have to put up with some banner and other forms of advertising.
But there is a way to do away with the ads. SuperFamily offers an ad-free version of its site for a fee of $4.95 a month. The bottom line is that we give SuperFamily, even with its faults, a lot of credit for being user-friendly.
But the most prudent advice, in bringing your family as a group into the cyberworld, is to concentrate on getting everyone up and running with group e-mail. The Internet is like Thanksgiving dinner--sometimes the basics are the best.
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Times staff writer David Colker covers personal technology.
