But why don’t all of the car makers in the auto industry create web sites that are mobile friendly? It would make sense to build mobile-friendly auto web sites since I’m thinking they may target similar demographics as mobile telecommunication and tablet manufacturers.

Additionally, if I was able to use a fully functional auto web site on my mobile device, I could build a car or two (for comparative purposes), save it on my iPad, walk into the car dealerships that I’ve narrowed in on with my car choices including specifications and options, and proceed with purchasing my chosen vehicle. Why not, right?

So, I went to a number of car web sites in the last 24 hours and this is what I found:

Ford.com: The main page looks good and the menu is functional which is also good. However, once I click on “Cars” and choose a model to “Build and Price” I’m stuck because the site goes to flash. Not good for anyone using iOS.

GM.com: Clicking on”Vehicles & Innovations” and “Vehicles Home” I get the choice of “Get Flash Now” or “Non-Flash Version” where I choose the latter. The difference between the two site versions is huge.  I can look at a bunch of little thumbnails of cars that’s sorted by class, but the site could be much better. They could have made it so there’s a nice image at the top of the page (for visual appeal) and then when you click an image, the top image is replaced with the model chosen before clicking through for the details of the auto; it would just work better visually. I felt cheated after seeing the Flash version on my laptop. Having said that, after I clicked into the details of a vehicle, it got better visually.

Chrysler.com: The best mobile auto site. Good functionality and look on the home page, can build own vehicle, and view the complete specs of the built car. The only thing I would have appreciated was the ability to save the car with specs as a pdf. Visually appealing site with fully functional menu and interactive. The Chrysler.com site offered the best iPad browsing experience. Well done.

Toyota.com: On the home page, the mobile button on upper right is cut off on the ipad. There’s no functionality to build a vehicle or really get any of specs. All I can view are some very brief and general descriptions of the model, but I’ve not yet found any details on models or options. I also downloaded the iPad app and it was even more limited. I can view photos and demos, but nothing that would be useful in my car buying and decision-making process. Their non-mobile web site has plenty of details, features and specs. The Toyota.com web site seemed better suited for an iPod or iPhone; the look and feel of the interior pages was better than the home page.

Honda.com: I can build a vehicle, but when I was actually building a car, I couldn’t see all of the accessories that were listed and available. However, when I went to the site on my laptop, I could see that there was a scroll bar in a frame that was not usable on the iPad. If not for the poor functionality because of the frame issues, this was a good site. Lot’s of information and details that would be useful toward making a purchase. The Honda.com web site was really good visually.

Mazdausa.com: The main page has “Wireless Home” in the title, and a ton of white space on the page to the right of the menu which made this the worst main page display. I clicked in to interior web site pages, and no change.  All of the text and images only used about a third of the display. Text was tiny and images were tiny thumbnails. I could see specs, but again, every page occupied a third of the available space.  Even the gallery had images too small that didn’t take advantage of the screen. This was a huge disappointment considering two car purchases I’ve made have been Mazdas. Not a good iOS experience at all.

HyundaiUSA.com: I can build my own car which was great, but I was only given a very small popup window with general information—no details or specifications on the car I had just built. I could have taken advantage of the “save” option but I would have had to give my email and personal info. Thanks, but no thanks. I would have liked a printable/pdf page with a summary of all specs and options. The look and feel of the HyundaiUSA.com site was good.

Kia.com: This mobile site seemed like it would be fine for an iPhone, but not so much for the iPad. There wasn’t any build a vehicle feature, so no real help in building the car I might want to buy. Having said that, the Kia.com site did give more details, specifications and features and options than competitor sites, although without visual impact. Also, while the options, features and specifications were available, the list was long and very basic in it’s web presentation.

Well, there you have it.  I hope this has been helpful. At the very least, it’s been helpful for my own car-buying process.

Then when Pew released another report on January 11 indicating some mismatches between mainstream press coverage and public interest on some topics (not including the economy), it seemed to give a reason as to why we tend to go to the internet for the news.

In general, the public tended to maintain its interest in major breaking news stories considerably longer than the press did. And the press tended to maintain substantially more interest in Washington Beltway controversies than did its audience.

So, I decided to write a quick article on some good sources I’ve found for trending news and what tools I tend to use the most to get the news I want.

• Twitter.  I admit, I love Twitter.  I don’t sit and stare at it all day, but I do follow several news Twitter feeds.  I found it helpful to create topic lists (like news and tech) and put those I follow in these lists. This is helpful when I’ve been away from Twitter for a while because I can take a look at a particular list as a filtered topic without seeing all of the other updates.
• Google Trends.  With this, I get a quick look of trending topics and searches. Often I’ll dig a bit deeper into the topics and searches to get a better idea as to why something is trending.
• Google Timeline. I used this tool in my search for happy news.  You can enter a term in the search field (like “economy”) and find articles that mention the term.  Filtering can be used in a number of ways to get as specific, or general, as needed.
• Favorite news sites. Of course, you can go to your favorite news sites to get the latest news.

iPad apps great for getting the news online

News resources and apps I use on the iPad:

• Pulse. This is one my favorite news apps and the first place I go for the news.  I can add a whole host of web sites under 5 different topic tabs.  Pulse has featured sources, but you can add any site’s rss feed to the reader.  I like this app because of the amount of information I have easily available without having to go to different web sites. When viewing an article, you have the choice of text or web pages and then there’s some share buttons to easily send it to to social sites or email. There’s also the ability to open up any article in Safari.
• SkyGrid.  This app is another “one stop shop” for news.  It has Featured, Most Viewed and Team Favorites sections in addition to giving you the ability to view the latest news by categories and you can search and follow any topic or interest.
• Flipboard. Another nice app because it’s really visual. You can also search for and add “people, lists and blogs” on Twitter as well as Facebook. The display is a fun magazine format that’s just nice to read.

So where do you get your news from? If you have any great ideas that I missed, let me know. Thanks!

I found out about E-Books for Troops while reading an article by James Fallows of The Atlantic.  This program takes gently used Kindles to fulfill their mission

“To provide U.S. military personnel with free e-book readers and quality reading material in order to enhance their opportunities for recreation and renewal while defending our nation at home and around the world.”

With my husband having served in the USAF, we talked about what a great initiative this is and how useful this would be for military members during deployments. Deployments can be anywhere from 3-12 months and with limited resources and storage, having a Kindle would enable military members to have their personal (and even professional) libraries with them.

If you don’t have a Kindle to donate, don’t worry. Ebooksfortroops.org has a PayPal button where you can make a monetary donation.  They’re also participating in the Amazon.com affiliate program so if you go to their site and then click through to buy from Amazon, Ebooksfortroops.org gets the referral.

• In order to get access to the Mac App Store, you need to update Mac OSX on your computer.  When you update OSX, an app will install on your dock to access the Mac App Store—and no, the Mac App Store is not included in iTunes.  Yeah, I thought it would be in the iTunes store, too. The update will require you to restart your computer so be sure to save all of your open files before you restart. Once the Mac App Store is downloaded and installed, you can click on the icon on the dock and start browsing (or buying) the apps.
• The terms and conditions must be accepted.  If not, you’ll probably get an error.  I didn’t get the error, but there was quite a bit of buzz online about getting an Error 100.
• Apps that are purchased or downloaded are automatically added to the dock.  This is probably so that you can see the apps easily after they’re downloaded and installed.  I don’t know about you, but my dock was packed as it was, so the additional apps on my dock made my icons pretty small. If you plan on really trying some apps from the Mac App Store, you may want to combine apps in the docs into stacks.
  • You can go to the Apple site to find out how to work your dock a bit.
  • I found that creating aliases (two-finger or right click any program to make an alias) for the programs I wanted on the dock, and then putting the program aliases in a folder, and finally clicking and dragging the folder to the dock worked really well for me. Once on the dock, click to reveal your options menu (for me it’s a two-finger click) to choose whether the folder displays as a “stack” of icons or as the folder icon.

Not only did the story of Ted make me happy, but he also emphasized in his interview what was most important to him.

• Relationships.  In the interview, Ted Williams talked about being grateful and looking forward to reconnecting with his mom of 92 years. Most importantly, he said that it had been too long since he had seen her and and it moved him to tears when he talked about reconnecting with his mom
• Basic necessities.  Ted just wanted to get a job, and be able to have a home where he can cook his meals. It’s that simple.  Nothing fancy.
• Grateful.  Ted’s authentic gratitude to reconnect with his mom , hopes of having a steady job and a roof over his head was humbling.  He was not only grateful for what had happened, but he said that he had learned to be grateful even before he left the streets.

I wish all of the best to Ted Williams and thank everyone that made the video shoot to the top of the trending videos on YouTube.com.

After yesterday’s post, this story was so needed. Not only is this story awesome because of Ted’s journey, but it’s awesome because it hit mainstream media because of people like you.  People that liked a good story, and said so on youtube.com, reddit.com and other social sites, and then wanted to share a happy story with others. Thanks so much to ritchey and the Columbus Dispatch for getting this story out to all of us.

In a conversation with my husband, I relayed that I only scan the news headlines because most headlines tend to focus on what’s wrong with our country, communities, or leaders.  It’s easy to find news on politicians bickering, catastrophes, corporate corruption and environmental issues.

But recently, I took a look at Google Timeline to find occurrences of the word “happy” and was only given a handful of results (mostly relating to sports and celebrities).

How does this help us, individually and, as a global society?  Rather than stoking up the fear quotient on issues like the environment, government and business, why not focus on how we can make some positive forward motion in all of these areas?  Why not report on how well we’ve done in any of these areas such as reducing our environmental footprint, how our government is working together to improve the quality of life for people and how businesses are working to reduce emissions? Or how we’re working to do better?

One might say that we report the way we do because “we’ve not done enough to improve…” Maybe so, but that’s just more fear.  If we truly want to pursue happiness, what permeates the virtual streams of information needs help…from all of us.

So, let’s talk more about what makes us truly happy.

Photo by Emily Rogers 2010

This awesome photo was taken by Emily Rogers (emojave-photography.tumblr.com).

“Best Buy continually listens to our customers, and they told us they want to give confidently this holiday season and every other day of the year — and with that comes easier returns. Effective Saturday, December 18, Best Buy is improving its return policy by removing restocking fees for all products except special orders. Customers can visit BestBuy.com for further information.”

This certainly is welcome news.  The last laptop I purchased from there was about 5 years ago and there was an issue with the battery being loose.  I took it back to the store only to be told that they wouldn’t exchange it (they said that there was nothing wrong with a loose laptop battery) and if I wanted to return it, I had to pay the crazy restocking fee of 15% which would have been $180. Needless to say, I kept the computer until I replaced it with my first MacBook.

I did go back a couple of times, mostly for sale items, but with the updated return policy, I may go back to actually browse.

What’s new is that I now see more of the videos I like in the way of favorites and friends’ activities where I can load more videos if I want to.  I still have recommendations, my subscribed channels along with spotlight, trending and featured videos. There just seems to be a lot more options for personalization right on the home page.

I’m liking this new layout.  It’s organized and personalized.  Info about the new youtube home page is here.

The main page of the web site is really well done in that you can use a handy (and pretty cute) form to send a message with a video attached to someone in need of tech help.  There are videos for both Macs and PCs as well as browser help, and more. Nice.  The videos can also be accessed through youtube.com

© 2010 ginnyrogers.com