I recognize that some of the people in my surrounding are very good in using all the social media apps, play games or use YouTube. Some people have absolutely no ability to use basic computers, phones or iPad, and then there are plenty of people in between. What almost all of these people have in common, is the fact that they actually don’t know or understand anything of the actually functioning of the technology.
If you ask a child “Where does the Milk come from?” and you get the answer “from the supermarket”, you know they need to be educated on the origin of food, the purpose of agriculture and animals. We don’t question whether it is important and “we adults” know why it is important the “basics of life”. In the same way, if you ask you son or daughter (or yourself), “Where is the Internet?” and the answer is “on my phone”, you know there is a gap in understanding.

So, I asked my kids the same questions, and it became obvious something is seriously missing in people’s understanding. Our whole world around us is made up of computer, internet and social media, which poses a lot of opportunities (career, joy, bringing people closer, access to information), but also treats (security, privacy, your dear possessions digitizes). Isn’t it really as important to know how it works, just as much as you know where the milk comes from?

I decided to write some articles explaining how the basics work. I wont call it “Technology for Dummies”, because the real dummies don’t think it is needed to read and know about this. The smart people would want to know this, and the super smart people know and use this already.

The basic section of this Academy, is to give an general understanding or terminology people use when talking about computers and get a general understanding about all the key functioning of the computer, phones and the internet.

Chapter 1 – Basics of Technology

Purpose of this chapter to get an understanding of a lot of basic terms, what they mean, their purpose and basic functioning. There are also some history lessons included and some interesting facts. Call it the “starter pack”

• Hardware vs. Software
• What is a computer and how it works
• What is an Operating System
• What are bites and bytes and megabytes, and TB?
• The Internet
• The World Wide Web – “The Web”
• Mobile Network
• Connectivity: Wifi, Wlan, Bluetooth, USB
• Social Media
• Cloud
• IoT – Internet of Things
• Data Security & Encryption
• Computer Safety

Chapter 2 – How to..

Here the ideas is to give you some practical tips for every day use of your dear (or not so dear) devices.

• What people know about you in the Internet
• Connecting your phone or ipad to WiFi
• Connecting your phone and sim
• Search on Internet
• Streaming
• Test your Network speed
• Finding solutions for your problem with your computer
• Meaning of Symbols in Mobile Phone Internet Signal Bar
• Setting up your internet at home
• Managing your cloud accounts

Chapter 3 – Digging a bit deeping

Usually, just understanding just a bit more about the things, gives you a better understaning how to deal with them. Just like with people, if you know teh person better, you will know much better how to handle them.

• How a computer works with bits & bytes
• All about Memory
• What is a Database
• WiFi – Wlan
• Bluetooth
• Web-pages in HTML

Chapter 4 – advanced

As the title says, this is in case you really like to take some deep-dives in some of the topics. The next step after this, you are ready to go off on your own, lots of stuff to find on internet fir specialized advanced topics, or you go to university to study the topics further. If you ready this point, you are really a pro!

• Processing Unit
• Data privacy and Security
• Network and it’s Components
• Mobile Network in much more detail
• Circuit switching vs Packet switching

There are  lots of websites with reviews on all the nice and new products as soon as they come out. I really appreciate these sites and the people who invest there time to test and try out all these new things. Believe me, I am using them a lot! Every time when I am looking for something new, I am really counting on someone doing the research for me! But then, you buy the product and have your own experiences with it. Not just the first 10 minutes, or the paid few hours to review the product, but the real life experience of an average Joe like me. The real products have a full life span. Some last for years and generate nostalgic feelings of happiness, but some of them end after very quick disappointment in the trash or an internet flea-market.

My Interest to mobile phones started right after I arrived to Finland in the Mid 90th. The rest of the world had barely heard of the portable phones, but In Finland it was already pretty common practice to have one. It was mainly NMT (Analog) voice, but the rise of the digital era of GSM was dawning.. Nokia was on the up rise and no wonder my heart is still with the Nokia Mobile phones, and whatever people may say, thanks to Nokia Mobile phone industry, and later the mobile internet and everything capitalizing on the success of the mobile devices, is because Nokia went through great efforts to standardize and making the phone available to the masses. 

I will bring you here my personal experiences, and share my personal mobile phone collection with you.

Nowadays everybody has some sorts of internet connection at home. How you do that typically, you go to one of your local operators (fixed or mobile) and they provide you I nice box you plug in the wall and that’s it. You get some codes for your Wifi setup and that is typically all you need. If you are in this category and you are happy (nothing wrong with that), I would recommend to stop reading now, as this is not for your. If you identify with the previous section and feel, that that is really not enough and fulfilling your need. E.g. not good enough coverage in your home everywhere? You have really a lot of devices to connect that sometimes don’t work well? You have a lot of Pictures or documents on multiple devices and don’t want to put everything to Google drive, but want to keep it yourself safely? Then “good news” there are good alternatives, and I advice you to keep reading. This is my own thoughts and ideas, how I tackled the shortcomings of having only a operator provided wireless router. I will cover the following key areas:

• Routers and Modems – to connect your network to the Internet
• Switches & Gateways – all your devices to be connected and maximize the wired connectivity
• Access Points – Optimize your wireless coverage
• NAS – Enabling safeguarding your precious data & allowing access to any device

I also intend to cover the topics such as internet security and personal cloud service.

Routers & Modems

Switches & Gateways

Access Points

In pictures I have been interested, probably since my early teens. But video I never was very much interested into, until my first child was born. So, nearly my last half of my life I have been having several Camcorders and other recording devices. I gave my experiences of them, as well as retrospectively looking at the experiences I had with them. 

When the time comes, I will also add here some blogs about my video editing experiences. As well as my personal experiences and high recommendations to preserve old videos or films. My father had lots of 8mm films from the 70th and 80th, and we digitized them edited them and now they are super fun to watch! The VHS or Betamax era unfortunately passed me by, so very little is known to me about those days.

Enjoyed Technology  Shared Experiences

the real stories