The Challenge: A Capitol Hill real estate agent and her congressional aide hubby are ready for a tech makeover. The Solution: We send in a Post tech squad to usher them into the world of iPods, digital pictures and Web surfing.
By Leslie Walker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 13, 2005
Jeanne Harrison had a simple mantra when she first met a Washington Post tech team assigned to help her and her husband, Randolph, update their digital lifestyle: She didn't want technology controlling her life, like those "crackberry addicts who spend too much time checking their BlackBerrys and not enough looking people in the eye."
"I would like to learn more about this stuff, but just to get the latest and greatest -- well, that's not me,'' she said in our initial meeting at her Coldwell Banker office on Capitol Hill.
Yet no sooner had the busy real estate agent described herself as the family Luddite than she revealed her tech wish list: a cell phone to replace her three-year-old handset; a digital camera, the family's first; an iPod; a DVD player; a digital stereo; and a big-screen TV. Eventually the couple hoped to set up a wireless network and get a laptop.
The Harrisons, like so many people, seemed tempted yet bewildered by the avalanche of shiny new digital devices rolling into electronics stores. While considering what to buy, they were still struggling to resolve glitches on their three-year-old home computer. Our mission was to help them clean up the computer, show them a few Internet tricks and help them decide what other technologies might enhance their lives. On the Post team were technology editor Dan Beyers and two technology columnists, Rob Pegoraro and myself.
Given Jeanne's hectic schedule, I thought she might reconsider the dreaded Blackberry. I showed her the color model I bought several months ago, featuring a phone, electronic calendar and Web access in addition to e-mail. But after looking it over, she said she couldn't imagine holding something so bulky up to her ear: "It would be like talking into a platter."
OK, so we take baby steps.
Her husband, Randolph, legislative director for a member of Congress, does most of his computing at work, Jeanne explained, while she uses the home Dell computer mostly to trade e-mail and manage her real estate listings. Jeanne still had no plan for regularly backing up her files, though she had recently copied her 2004 taxes onto a floppy disk after learning her lesson when her computer's hard drive failed. Fed up, she had gone computer-free for months before buying a new drive. The machine was functional again -- except for a pesky message that kept popping up at inopportune times.
Music was a passion for her and her husband, an Internet radio fan. He was eager to get an iPod, and they both wanted a new home stereo since theirs had stopped working. Those decisions were being delayed because they were preparing to renovate a Victorian house on Capitol Hill. They were still debating how to wire the house for digital sound.
Beyers, a fan of instant messaging, wondered if Jeanne might benefit from such software, especially to stay in touch with her husband and partners. "How do you talk to your husband during the day?" he asked.
"Nicely," she deadpanned.
Beyers explained how he uses instant messaging to make sure his wife and kids can reach him almost any time -- he can even have the messages forwarded to his cell phone. "I get way too much e-mail at work," he said. "I created special channels at work so my family can reach me."
"Really!" she kept saying, perhaps to be polite.
She expressed more interest in digital cameras, saying she wanted one of the skinny Casio models barely bigger than a credit card that she had seen a friend use. For now, she and her partners check out a loaner from her office whenever they get a new property listing.
As for the Web, she did little online shopping, though she and her husband did some online travel booking, reserved boats online for their Annapolis sailing club and occasionally bought books from Amazon.com.
Back in the newsroom, Beyers, Pegoraro and I discussed items we could recommend or show the Harrisons. We agreed there was no point in pushing them too far. Most tech gear is needlessly complicated, and requires time to master. We decided to keep it simple.
They wanted help in installing the Firefox Web browser, which Randolph used at work but hadn't been able to get working at home. Pegoraro would install the iTunes music software to show what they could do with that iPod they wanted. We agreed on a short list of Web sites to introduce them to, such as Half.com for used books and Answers.com for reference.
Beyers suggested we also install Picasa 2, the free photo-organizing software from Google. I volunteered to lend the Harrisons my three-megapixel Nikon Coolpix camera, since I had recently bought a newer model. And Pegoraro promised to bring his arsenal of anti-spyware programs to obliterate the recurring pop-up message rattling Jeanne.
"I'll kill it if it's the last thing I do," he vowed.
When Pegoraro, Beyers and I arrived at the Harrisons' cozy townhouse the next Monday, the couple and their dogs, Riley and Murphy, were there to greet us. Randolph joked that he was basically too lazy and cheap to equip himself with the latest, greatest technology.
He had, however, taken time Saturday to run an anti-spyware program on their home computer, which may have removed some nasty programs that hackers and electronic snoops tend to install on home computers. But any fix Randolph may have achieved likely would have been short-lived. Pegoraro found there was no active firewall, a program designed to protect computers from intruders entering over the Internet.
No sooner had he sat down at their computer than up popped one of those text messages that irked Jeanne: "Message from Security Monitor to Windows User.' "
"If the firewall was on, then it should be blocking this messenger service stuff," Pegoraro said.
With a click here and a click there, Pegoraro activated the firewall built into Microsoft Windows XP, which started blocking those Windows messages. Then he ran adware and spyware sweeps.
Jeanne mentioned another glitch: When she browsed property listings on the Metropolitan Regional Informational System Web site, she got a blank window instead of the photos she was supposed to see on virtual property tours. Pegoraro diagnosed the problem as an outdated software program and installed the latest version of Flash.
Bingo. We were soon taking a 360-degree virtual tour of a house with a garish decor. "Wow, check out that orange paint," Pegoraro quipped. "What's that going to do for the sale value of this place?' "
"I'd have it repainted," Jeanne said, peering over his shoulder.
Next, Pegoraro installed the Firefox browser and showed the couple a few useful Web sites. Among them was Kayak.com, a travel service the Harrisons said might help them book lower fares for a wedding this summer. Next came comparison shopping service PriceGrabber.com, where Pegoraro entered the model of digital camera he had bought his wife and demonstrated how to get price quotes from different retailers.
Randolph perked up during the iTunes display, asking about the limitations that Apple Computer's music service places on copying purchased tunes.
But the demo that intrigued him the most, he later said, was the photo software Picasa. The Harrisons had held off going digital, he explained, until digital camera prices fell to affordable levels.
To show what Picasa could do, I snapped pictures of the Harrisons with my digital Nikon, opened a flap on the camera, pulled out the compact flash storage card holding the images, and slipped it inside a card reader I had plugged into their computer. Picasa instantly found the pictures.
Pegoraro then walked the Harrisons through editing tricks, such as cropping extraneous people -- Beyers and me -- out of the picture. He showed how to straighten crooked perspectives, lighten and darken images and "undo" changes that don't work out.
"What can you do about my hair? I have a 20th college reunion coming up," Jeanne said with a chuckle.
Pegoraro showed how to recolor photos in sepia tones and introduced the "mask" tool that lets people select any area of an image and instantly recolor it.
"So it's like a rinse. I love it!" she declared.
Before we left, the Harrisons thanked us for the show-and-tell, which they said had opened their eyes to unfamiliar resources.
I checked in with Jeanne a few times over the next week and chatted by phone as she sat down at her computer to download the first photos she had taken with the digital Nikon.
"There it is!" She burst into laughter when she saw the photos she had taken of a couple attending a prom in yellow and orange outfits made of duct tape.
She and Randolph were close to buying a digital camera, along with an iPod and DVD player. But she still needed help using much of what we had showed.
"Is there a little guide, 'Things you'd love to know but nobody ever told you about technology?' '' she asked, describing how so many people feel when they try to upgrade their digital lifestyles. "It's like trying to look a word up in the dictionary, but you don't know how to spell it, so how can you look it up?"