CYBERFRIENDS, GOOGLE ALERTS, AND SKYPE AUDIO INTERVIEW

On her most recent blog post (at www.GrandmaIdeas.com) Nina Lewis wrote, “One of the blessings of the Internet is ‘finding’ new friends,” and she went on to write about how she and I “met” on the Internet. This is a sentiment I share – and I’m a little frustrated now because I left a comment on her post (I think) to this effect, but so far it has not appeared. Navigating in cyberspace is sometimes an adventure.

Nina went on in her post to review SUPER GRANNY, and then she embarked on a new cyber-adventure for both of us – she conducted an audio interview with me on Skype, which you can download and listen to here . The interview runs about 20 minutes, takes a little while to download, and may tell you more than you ever wanted to know about me. But the best thing is that you can also hear about other grandmothers and some of the things they do with their grandchildren.

I have enjoyed “meeting” both grandmother bloggers and grandmother “doers” (not mutually exclusive categories) on the Internet. A number of the grandmothers I interviewed for SUPER GRANNY were strangers to me until I read something online about their activities. I heard of some of them through a terrific service called Google News Alerts. You go to www.Google.com, click on ”More” at the top of the page, click on “even more,” until you reach a menu that includes “Alerts.” A box will appear that will let you type in whatever topic you want to keep up to date on. I have alerts for “grandmother,” “breastfeeding” another topic I write about), and a couple of others, and every day I receive a message from Google with reports on these topics from media around the world.

By following up some of these reports, I have been able to “meet” and get to know grandmothers with whom I’ve continued to stay in touch – and yes, whom I now consider friends.