Phew… what a weekend!
Laura, Jade and the others have been busily packing the new Technology Help is at Hand books ready to send out as many as we can this afternoon (if you haven’t read the information about them and you’d like to, you can do that here).
And I’ve been off with Tim and the boys looking at a rather lovely house – we’re hoping to move in the new year. I thought I’d mention the house, because of how I went about booking the viewing.
Up until fairly recently, the way you’d go about booking to see a house – or visit an optician, or eat out at a restaurant, or whatever – hadn’t changed for decades. You’d ring them up (or go in in person).
But lately, it’s become the thing to book yourself in for these things using a sort of online diary – so you say which day you want to go, pick a time and see if there’s a space free. Then you can just put your details in online and job’s a good’n.
If I’m going out to a chain restaurant – like a Beefeater or a Wetherspoons – that’s the way I do it now. They’re really reliable, and it saves me and them an awkward, noisy phone call.
It’s worth knowing that some businesses are better at it than others, though! So, the estate agent had one of these diary things set up on their website, with specific time slots that you could book for specific houses. “How organised”, I thought.
Unfortunately, the times were all just made up, and I got a call an hour or so later to actually sort out the booking. Ah well – points for effort!
Microsoft and Huawei
And in the technology news last week, I read that the US government have finally said yes to Microsoft working with Huawei again.
They’re only allowed to do certain things together, but it means that Huawei laptops will be able to carry on running Windows. Which I think is great news.
Hopefully, they’ll follow suit with Google in the not too distant future…