Learning Software Is Like Making Pancakes

Vendor Voice: The process may be difficult at first, but quickly becomes a habit.

JR Jenkins, Law Technology News

July 21, 2014    | 0 Comments

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New software typically enters an organization riding on the promise that it will dramatically improve a key business process. Exhaustively evaluated to ensure it meets the technical and business requirements of the buyer, it is often deployed with great fanfare—an ally for an overworked team that will rely on the software every day to manage crucial projects. But soon thereafter, users often encounter problems using the software or view the software as deficient in key areas. Is the software broken? Does it not deliver where the vendor said it would?  Has the buyer been duped? Or has a lack of dynamic user training reduced the promised productivity gains?

It is fair to say that software today has never been more powerful. But app culture and social media have conditioned us to never be satisfied. With data overload and constant interruptions being a daily challenge for today’s workers, users often do not use more than the software’s basic feature set. Research from Microsoft Corp. in 2008 showed that the top five commands in Microsoft Word accounted for 32 percent of all command usage in the application.The top three? Copy, paste, save.

The software that we access and use everyday offers so much more than what the average user taps. What has resulted is that most people look to software updates to deliver new functions rather than understanding valuable features that may already exist in the product. 

Read more: http://www.lawtechnologynews.com/id=1202663623779/Learning-Software-Is-Like-Making-Pancakes-#ixzz38FOjN7He

Internet could help isolated seniors out of their loneliness

Research by a UK think tank called The Policy Exchange shows that about four in 10 people in the UK aged 65 and over don’t have access to the Internet at home, even though they could benefit from it.

The senior citizens are losing out, it's reported, on a means of social interaction at a time of life when contact with others is particularly important.

Policy Exchange says a significant percentage of older people are very lonely and that the World Wide Web could alleviate some of that loneliness. All it would take would be a cool one billion Euro to bring dramatic social and economic benefits. So can the elderly learn to love tech? And do they even want to?

Rosemary Sargentson could be the "silver surfer" poster child Policy Exchange has in mind when it suggests that a significant investment should be made to help pensioners learn how to get online. She's a little older than your average child though. A frail, but elegant lady, she doesn't have time to give her exact age because she's busy learning new skills - getting to, then using, and then possibly even enjoying the Internet.

http://www.dw.de/internet-could-help-isolated-seniors-out-of-their-loneliness/a-17755727

Older adults and internet use

BY KATHRYN ZICKUHR AND MARY MADDEN

For the first time, half of adults ages 65 and older are online

As of April 2012, 53% of American adults ages 65 and older use the internet or email. Though these adults are still less likely than all other age groups to use the internet, the latest data represent the first time that half of seniors are going online. After several years of very little growth among this group, these gains are significant.

Overall, 82% of all American adults ages 18 and older say they use the internet or email at least occasionally, and 67% do so on a typical day.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/06/06/older-adults-and-internet-use/

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