Click-o-Rama

Welcome to the large-print edition of Shiny Things. I'm still playing with the type faces here. Is it more readable today?


I spend a good deal of time every day pointing and clicking. Clickety click click click. Even beyond my job, my interests have me searching the Internet and clicking away here and there and everywhere, going down rabbit trails ... clickety click click click ... oh! Look what I found!


Is clicking behavior - that is, a willingness to click without abandon - generational or gender-based? Are some people afraid that if they click on a link or an ad or anything else on a page that someone will steal their cookies? Or that they'll get a virus? (My sister raised the virus concern. I really don't know what to say.)


I'll admit the wide-open Web can be scary. Kind of a Pandora's Box of knowledge and possibility. (Did you know it was really a jar and not a box? Go ahead and click that wiki link. You'll also see that hope was a big part of the Pandora myth.) 


I like most things "e." Not just for the shiny-ness. Largely for the connectional possibilities. Just like any technology, the Internet can be used for good and for bad. But I've seen so many good applications, and I support them as much as I can. 


Take for example The Hunger Site. Now you can click on the link in the text back there or you can just key www.thehungersite.com in your address bar. Your choice. Lizz showed me this one a year or so ago. I now have it as my home page (on both work and home computers) when I open my browser. So the first thing I do is click on the big orange button and thanks to my click, sponsors pay for cups of food. And now and then when I'm taking the time for rabbit trails, I spend some time clicking around and looking at all the nifty Fair Trade stuff I can buy and the other worthy efforts I can support when budget allows. I'm just looking ... clicking costs me nothing but it benefits the causes. And if I'm sharing my cookies at the same time? I don't really mind. I like cookies.