Comments on: Internet fails to shine for 'silver surfers'

The Modern Maturity set is a growing yet elusive demographic for IT product engineers and Web site designers.

[volterwd]

meh to seniors

until they embrace the technology and stop complaining its too complicated no one will care

Uh...

No one will care? I?m 22 years old and work for an online marketing firm, so I?m not a ?senior citizen.? Yet, still today it boggles my mind how many poorly designed web sites there are. I don?t mean personal sites, or crappy local retailers. I mean large-scale corporations, news sites, etc.

Look for a book on amazon called ?Don?t Make Me Think!? I like that statement and stick by it when creating anything. I think if we made the web easier to use it would benefit everyone, not just seniors.

Seniors on line

I am not 60 just yet but close. I embraced the putor (built my own), learn what I need to learn and try to stay current. And I still take exception to the idea that people need to quit griping and embrace the technology. A wonderful tool is going to waste because of frustration. Make it simple, safe and useful and they will take it on. (like Windows put a computor in home reach not too long ago). There is some serious money in that age group. Or maybe I'd just like to get email from my dad. While I am at it, could somebody produce a bigger keyboard for those of us with big hands?

[jeanhohn]

Silver Surfers

Thanks for your comment, Ted. And a pox on ye, young meh!

I'm very soon going to reach my three-quarters of a century mark. I bought my first PC (a PS-2 from IBM, no Windows, DOS only) about ten years ago from QVC. I've charged along since that time to what I own now, a year-old Alienware Area-51 Xtreme, running WinXP Home. I burn DVDs, play games, and have created my own website with the novellas I've written on the computer.

In that time if it hadn't been for a terrific young man who led me many times out of the quicksand, listened to me scream when I tweaked just one too many things and crashed, hard, I would not have made it.

I do think they are unnecessarily quirky, very hard to decipher sometimes, almost gleefully obscure other times. But they are, in my not so humble opinion, something that once "mastered," brings an enormous amount of light to darkening eyes.

[ElderLee]

Advice and Tips

I would like to ask you all for some advice and/or tips for my next project.
I have decided to create a video tutorial aimed at helping elderly people get online and make use of the Internet. I can think of thousands of subjects myself to cover but I am trying to keep it as simple as possible.

I would greatly appreciate any ideas or requests for tutorials or subjects to cover that might make the whole WWW experience for the elderly surfer a more easy and pleasurable experience. If you are having difficulty performing certain tasks online then share, your frustration and maybe I could cover that subject in a tutorial.

Looking forward to all of your idea's

Kind regards

Elder Lee