Summer has been good for geeks

A screen capture of the Jackson Browne page on Spotify.com, the new free music player.

I'm not the world's biggest computer geek. I don't write code, can't read or write html, and I really could use a class in Microsoft Word. I know Word does all kinds of cool stuff I don't even know about. But I do like to keep up with the times.

My family's first computer, the Apple IIe. It didn't do much,
especially since we didn't write code.

For those of us who love the latest tech thing, it has been a good summer. My friend Ed sent me an invitation to Google +, OS Lion came out, and www.spotify went online.

Google + is a new social network that may just have the answer to handling your Aunt Helen's  wanting to be your friend on Facebook. You don't want to offend the dear old thing and you might like to share your children's Disneyland photos, but you don't want her to see pics of you and the hubby doing tequila body shots in Cancun.

With Google +, you designate people in your life to different circles, like family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, even church friends, I suppose.

Then, each time you upload a photo, make a comment or share a link, the program asks which circle you want to share it with. So, as long as you pay attention when you post, people sitting next to you in the pew on Sunday won't see your drunken party pics.

I upgraded to OS 10 Lion the other day, which makes the trackpad on my MacBook operate like the touchscreen on a iPad (which I can't afford, but would love). To scroll up and down, you just use two fingers; and to switch between open programs, you just swipe in a sideways motion. You pinch to make things smaller, and reverse to increase the size. I've yet to master it all, but it has made my laptop way less attractive to my husband.

Charlotte Quinn, who "reads" Dr. Seuss
books on my smartphone.

An aside: my daughter told me how disturbed she was when my two-year-old granddaughter Charlotte was handed a stack of snapshots and swiped her fingers from one side to the other trying to make the photo change, like she does on her daddy's smartphone. We are becoming technology dependent at younger and younger ages now.

But the Lion upgrade only cost $29.99, so it was a whole lot of fun for not much money. And seriously, Apple, haven't you exhausted the whole big-cat naming thing? Tiger, Panther, Leopard, Snow Leopard, now Lion. Aren't lions the kings of the jungle? What tops them?

What tops inexpensive software is free software, and Spotify is just a music-lover's dream. It is free now for unlimited streaming, but after six months, the free version will only give you a certain amount of hours before you have to pay the $5 a month charge or the premium $10, which allows you to play the songs on your iPod or smartphone.

It isn't so great for discovering new music; Pandora is still better at that. Pandora lets you pick a song or a band, then creates playlists with music that complements it using the Music Genome Project. Then it plays the list like a radio station, and you can click your "like" or "dislike" or each song and it adjusts itself by eliminating that type of song from your playlist. The pay version eliminates the ads.

With Spotify, you can pull up an artist and see practically their whole catalog and play it. It integrates your iTunes and Facebook, so you can see what your friends are listening to and send them messages and links to songs you like.

For Baby Boomers, the best part of Spotify is being able to listen to artists you loved as a teenager without having to buy yet another greatest hits CD or download. For some reason last week, I was longing to hear Jackson Browne, my favorite artist in my moody teen and early 20 years. I bought a greatest hits from iTunes and burned it so I could hear it in my car.

Before long, I realized why I haven't listened to Jackson in years: Holy Cow, is he depressing! And those songs I loved? He's singing about the apocalypse! No wonder I was unhappy all the time. If I had Spotify then, I could have gotten my nostalgia fit out of my system without spending money.

Also, I have been finding old stuff, like the Martin Denny lounge records my dad used to have. It brings the early 1960s right back. No wonder the 1990s lounge revival picked up on him. But some of it is just bad: "Hawaiian War Chant" was used in way too many Bugs Bunny cartoons to be taken seriously.

I love "Chinatown" like jazz with heavy saxophones, and was told that the Jackie Gleason Orchestra was just the ticket. I found it on Spotify, and they were right. And now I can test out old Charlie Parker and Mile Davis songs to find out what I like before I pay good money for it.

I kept testing Spotify to find old things, and I wasn't disappointed. Yes, they have "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" by the Small Faces, and Moby Grape's first album, so go nuts. They don't have the Beatles, but don't we all own all those in multiple formats anyway?

I keep running into people who say they miss my column and didn't realize I have taken it online. And some people who say they forget to read the blog since it isn't on their breakfast table on Sunday morning. I have a wonderful suggestion: Google Reader.

If you have Google Reader, it will aggregate all the websites, blogs, newspaper sites, etc. that you read all in one place. If you stay logged into it, anytime you are on a site and see the RSS bug, merely click it and it will add it to your Reader. You can make Google News Alerts, and they will be there too.

For instance, I have one for Richard Branson, because he interests me and he does fascinating things. So every time he is mentioned on the web, the news alert finds it and emails me a list once a week. I also read Heather Armstrong's blog, and it appears in my email program under "RSS feeds."

I made a minutes-long screen capture video with Jing for a distance learning class that explains it all, so if you are interested in how to set up Google Reader, you can watch it here.

If you set up Google Reader, you should be able to subscribe on my blog site and the link will show up in your email program every Sunday as well as on your Reader page. If you go to a lot of different sites daily, it might save you some time.