Carefully wading into Web 2.0

Widget check: rain today, tomorrow & Saturday. Best gas price holding at $2.39.

Yesterday I got an email from one of my regular customers at work; she had just joined "Facebook" and put me on a list of folks she invited to join with her. I had read that Facebook was a bit less of a high school hangout than MySpace, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Maybe I'm a late adopter, but here I am with a blog and a social network page, taking a few curious steps into the current incarnation of the web. I feel like I'm standing exactly between two camps; one one hand the teens/tweens/treens (there's a new word) who have already plowed this path thoroughly (and who will probably snicker at what a newb I am ... ), and on the other hand many of my clients who are retired folks, thinking I'm the consumate computer expert. I'm somewhere in the middle.

[[[Hey sis, this is the new Middle Class. I found it!!!]]]

The next thing I need to do is get this silly blog customized. I don't mind the simplicity of the generic header, but I guess it's irresponsible as a designer not to put up one of my own. The difficulty is in wanting it to be PERFECT instead of just different. I've been going over ideas on updating my brand (I know, lingospeak... how boring). For the last couple of years, my home page has featured 4 window panes with a view of a dandelion and lots of blue sky. Not that the dandelion is particularly iconic for me; I just really liked the image. It was mostly about there being a view through the windows, and being able to choose which window to go through (click) to get someplace else. That's pretty telling about my own life; seems I've spent more than a couple of decades looking for a portal to go through, trying to get where I want to be. (Wow, my home page was more profound than I had originally planned. A little subliminal design action, I guess). Maybe that's a springboard for planning the next incarnation. But don't want to do it until I can use it to showcase some new skills, and before that I need to finish getting a good handle on the new software I've acquired... Achh. Where's the first domino??