The first computer I used was a mainframe in Abilene, Texas.  It was owned by a local bank, and used to reconcile their financial information.  As college students, we got some time on it to run our programs written in Fortran IV.  The programs were input using punch cards, and the output was on striped green paper.  The computer only had 8K octal memory, so you were quite limited in what could be done.  Graphs were printed in X’s and O’s.  Along with it’s card readers and tape drives and printers, it took up a sizable room, which had to have special air conditioning.

So, I’m just wondering how many others of you can remember when:

• Input to a computer had to be from a deck of cards or paper tape.
• Printouts came in one flavor:  capital letters on green and white striped paper.
• Graphics were printed in X’s and O’s.
• Mainframes had 8K octal memories — and that was what a bank would use to reconcile accounts.
• A CDC 6600 was a super computer.  There was one in Texas, and you could send jobs to it from a teletype terminal using paper tape.
• The green screen IBM terminal use was “personal computing.”
• The TI four function calculator was Science Magazine’s product of the year (1976).
• PC’s, Apple II’s, Commodore 64′s and the TI 9400 computer were the latest things, but couldn’t talk to other computers.
• Dot matrix printers were the new revolution.
• DOS was how things worked.
• Social networking was done on a mainframe using NOTES.
• Networks would allow computers to talk to each other, but only if they were physically linked.
• WWW wasn’t graphical.
• Different email programs couldn’t talk to each other.
• Portable computers weighed 20 pounds (I had one made by Compaq).

The first five of these were true 40 years ago when I was in graduate school.  The last five are from about 20 years ago.

So, when was the first time you used a computer?  What kind was it, and what did you use it for?

I’ve been using the Mobile Me sync functionality for calendars and contacts, letting it sync with Outlook as well as my iPhone.  It’s been okay, but I don’t use Outlook anymore, and the Mobile Me web interface just hasn’t caught on with me for calendaring.  It’s just too clunky.

I’ve had a Google Calendar for a long time, but I really haven’t been using it much either.  I primarily use my iPhone for calendaring.  But Google Calendar does have the functionality I want in a desktop calendar, and it does nice things like sending an email agenda every day if you want (and I do).

So long story short, I moved my calendar and contacts sync with my iPhone today away from Mobile Me to Google Sync.  It wasn’t a painless process.  I uploaded my contacts before syncing, but after the sync, I still had to do a lot of repair work.  Some numbers lost the name that went with them.  That was minor compared to the calendar issues.  The sync process wiped out most of the items on my iPhone calendar, and Mobile Me calendaring doesn’t have any way to export data.  But fortunately I was able to export from my Outlook calendar and import the data into Google Calendar, and now I’m whole.

Bottom line:  I’m glad I made the move, and think this will serve me better in the long run.   As for online storage, which is now all I use Mobile Me for, I’ll move that somewhere else as well when the current subscription term is up.

There are many blogs that address these concerns, and recently some of these agreed to participate in a WebRing that leads readers from one blog to another.  It’s a great idea, and initially I also agreed to participate.

The problem that popped up was the website that provides the linkage:  Webring.  You’ll notice that I didn’t hyperlink their web address.  That’s because when you go to their site you’re bombarded with a loud message and flashing graphics from a very annoying ad.  Unfortunately, the way the webring works is by sending people from your site to the webring site with the annoying ad — where you can then find the links to the other blogs.

I hated being subjected to the ad.  And I certainly don’t want to send my readers there to be annoyed.  Because then they’d be annoyed with me.

Lesson learned?  Be careful what you agree to until you see the implementation.  You could lose a lot of readers fast.