Communicating with friends and family using New Technologies

This weeks task -Write a post about how you use new communication technologies to communicate with your friends and family. Some things to consider:

• Do you have friends whom you only know from the internet and have never met in person? Is this different to people that you know in person? Describe the difference.
• How long have you been using these communication technologies?
• What influenced you to start using these particular technologies?
• Is privacy an issue for you when using new technologies? (How do you deal with issues around privacy?)

I have a few family members that I have only ever had contact with due to the internet. My father was adopter as an older child and knowing he had other siblings. He spent his whole adult life looking for this family. About 13 years ago one of his brothers found him and they started a search for their other brother but had no luck. 4 years go my brother and I were Googling our dad and found a post on a bulletin board looking for someone that fitted our dads description. Long story short it was the other brother dad had been looking for.

I have been on the net since 2000 because my best friend moved to Brunei and the phone calls cost us a small fortune. MSN was the best thing that happened to us, we were on there for hours. We use to put our children on a mat on the floor in front of the computer put the web cam on them. We'd do sill things like give them the same toys so they could play together and let them have picnics on the mat and have lunch together. When the kids were asleep we would sit and have coffee like we did when she was home. I am still crazy about MSN. Now my kids use it to keep in touch with their cousins in the uk, playing games and chatting.

Mobile phones have changed heaps since my dad bought me my first one. I has to have a hand bag just for the phone now it is so small I can't find it in my bag. On Wednesday last week I came to uni but forgot my mobile phone. It made me panic. I know I need to be in touch with my children's school, but it wasn't that. I was like my arm was missing. I didn't even know what time it was and had to ask people. My husband thinks I will be one of the first people we know to have my phone surgically added (when they can do that).

You will find me checking out face book most days. I have 7 brothers living all over Australia and the world, so it is great for them to be able to what we are up to. A lot of the time the info on what we are doing goes up on the same day that it happens. So my brothers are watching their niece and nephew grow up in real time.

The privacy thing - well I only add friends and try never to add to much that I wouldn't want a stranger to know.