by Judy W
(originally published in Currents October 2003)

This article is addressed to those whose lives are "just fine, thank you" without a computer and to those who want to know more about what their computers can do for them. Here is an overview of some of the ways computers are enhancing the lives of our club members.

Whether you are writing a letter, an article for Currents, or that "great American (or German) novel", you need to convey your thoughts in a logically flowing manner so that your reader(s) will understand what you are trying to say. The longer the piece of writing, the harder it is to organize your thoughts. The old fashioned way to write that school term paper or magazine article or book was to fill out lots and lots of little filing cards with bits of information, and then spread them out on the desk or floor so you could see what order to put them in, and then type out all the information on the typewriter. And then you realize that you left something important out, and you have to do a bunch more typing to add that piece and retype the rest of the pages. And then the corrections come back, and you have to type everything all over again.

The wonderful thing about a computer document editing program is that you can develop your thoughts, expanding, deleting and rearranging as you go and print out a copy when you are done. And when you, your instructor or your editor says that you need to make revisions, you make only the needed corrections in the computer and let the printer type out the new, improved version for you.

There are specialized computer programs for keeping track of your finances, cataloging collections, planning model train layouts or creating cross stitch patterns. With scanners, you can bring text into your computer without having to type every word yourself. Digital photos can be loaded into your computer and altered for use as greeting cards, artwork to enhance Currents or backgrounds on your computer screen. With a digital video camera and specialized computer software, you can edit your own home movies or create a film to enter into the Cannes Film Festival. Games can be educational or just for fun. A computer language program has infinite patience with your repeated mistakes, and kids can supplement their school classes with practice at home. Of course, there is always Solitaire for relaxing or Tomb Raider for recharging your mental energies.

Your home can be connected to a much broader world via the Internet. More and more people are saving commuting costs and time by working one or more days of the week from home, communicating with the office via the Internet. If you are self-employed, people can learn about you via your own website and send you orders for your products or services, and you can order the supplies you need from other people's websites.

Club members and professional people can exchange information regardless of time zones or working hours because the recipient reads her email at her own convenience and does not find herself answering the phone in the middle of the night when someone forgets that it is past bedtime here in Germany. Emails are cheaper than long distance phone calls or frequent travel to meetings, and more complex information can be transferred via attachments than can be faxed or explained during phone calls. Your webteam keeps each other informed between meetings via email so that when we do meet, we have already handled many of the details and can concentrate on the major issues.

Email is a handy way to keep in touch with friends and relatives. You can compose a long letter or dash off a quick thought without waiting until you have enough to say to fill up a page of stationary or an entire greeting card. For that matter, you can send electronic greeting cards via email, complete with music and dancing cartoon characters. Those digital photos I spoke of above can be attached to an email to keep grandma connected to the grandchild growing up on the other side of the world. And remember that article for Currents you composed with the aid of your home computer? Once it is done, you attach it to an email to send to this month's editor, and it can be easily proofread, edited and inserted into the layout without having to be retyped at any stage.

Shopping online from reputable companies can save time and sometimes money. You can compare prices among the various offerings online, and decide if they beat the bargains available in local stores. Be sure to figure in extra taxes and shipping costs before you make your decision – these costs may not be included in those attractive prices displayed in the web ad. And, of course, when you are ordering your books, CD's, videos and DVD's from our sponsor Amazon.de (you can connect to them via our ad at the bottom of our club website homepage), 5 percent of your order goes to support your club and its activities. Another fun way to shop (or sell) online is via auction websites such as E-Bay. All kinds of things are available there, from collectibles to ordinary household objects, and you decide before-hand the upper limit that you are willing to spend, or the lower limit that you are willing to accept on your object for sale. E-Bay automatically handles the bidding and notifies the lucky buyer at the agreed-upon date.

Of course, since it is so easy to put websites up on the Internet, this means that there is an enormous amount of information available. You can find telephone numbers, addresses and maps from all over the world, as well as how to navigate the S-Bahn and U-Bahn right here in Hamburg. Health information, financial news and gossip about your favorite movie star are just some of the important as well as trivial things you can find by "surfing" the Internet. Most newspapers are now online, and you can keep in contact with your hometown news, as well as local news from one of the newspapers here in Hamburg. If you are looking for a particular club or organization, chances are that they have a website that will allow you to contact them via email. A number of our club members found AWC Hamburg by surfing the Internet.

A note from an experienced surfer: Get information from a variety of sources and do not assume that because something is presented in an attractive, professional looking website or explained in an authoritative tone, that it must be the one and only truth. What is presented on any given website is, as is all printed material, the considered opinion of the website author, and material available on other websites can just as plausibly disagree.

Any questions? Ask your webteam – we will see if we can demystify things for you. See Tanja's articles on Internet Vocabulary and on how to get online for more information.