Day: January 29, 2009

Google, Microsoft, technology

Microsoft Could Learn from Google

Christa Avampato

I’ve been a Microsoft customer for post of my life. Even though I moved over to Mac about a year ago, and have never looked back, I still bought Microsoft Office for Mac. After looking for closely at Google Docs, I am beginning to think that I may never need another Microsoft product, ever. 


Google runs most of my life – email, this blog, my blog reader, almost any internet search I do, and I’m even thinking of switching to T-Mobile so I can get the Google phone. I’ve shied away from Google Docs until recently. I’m not sure why. I guess it was just habit to open up Excel or Word, save to my hard drive, and then back up to my external hard drive. 

I’ve recently signed on with Examiner.com to be one of their business reporters – I’m very excited about the gig and have ideas popping up all the time. It’s one of the nice things about being a writer – everything that happens to you, good, bad, or indifferent, is potential material. Most of the time I’m not home, so having documents on my hard drive isn’t efficient. I have to write down my ideas on some scrap of paper or email them to myself and then type them into my Excel schedule when I get home. Inefficient and a time waster. And I hate wasting time.

Google Docs is the answer – whether I’m at home, at work, or out and about with my mobile, I can log in, type my ideas right into my writing schedule, and be done. (Well, except for the actual writing.) And they’re there for you to connect to, any time, any where. Compatible with windows. You can share the documents with others, if you’d like. And it formats well – very well. I mean why doesn’t Excel automatically align column content with the width of the column? And 99% of the time isn’t the top row a header row? 

Google observed behavior and made a great product to boot that’s easy to use and highly accessible. Microsoft, you have a lot to learn, and Google can teach you.    
charity, education, Junior Achievement, nonprofit, philanthropy

My Year of Hopefulness – More Teaching with Junior Achievement

Christa Avampato

There are few days that I felt as nervous as I did teaching my Junior Achievement class in the South Bronx. It was the first Friday of December 2008 and I received the day off from work to teach Economics to 7th graders at Middle School (MS) 223. This school is just down the street from St. Anne’s, the church featured in Jonathan Kozol’s books describing the Mott Haven neighborhood. Mott Haven is one of the most violent, drug addicted areas of this country. It is ground zero for the war on poverty. 


In MS 223, I felt like I was making a difference to kids who needed role models but what struck me so suddenly was that those kids and teachers had a tremendous impact on me. 20 minutes away by subway from my safe, beautiful Upper West Side neighborhood I found a completely different New York. Many of the students I met that day have never been outside of their own neighborhood. They know that there is something more to the world than the South Bronx but they don’t know if they’ll ever get to see it save for watching it on TV. That one cold day in December changed the way that I looked at this city, and it changed the way I saw my life playing out. 

I was thrilled to get an email at work today from Junior Achievement about an opportunity to teach Corporate Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility at the High School of Economics and Finance. While not in the South Bronx, it’s a subject matter that is very dear to me because of my link to the nonprofit world. It’s steps away from my office building and for an hour a week for seven weeks this Spring, I will get to teach high school students about a subject that I am passionate about. It’s opportunities like this that really make a difference – as much to my life as to the lives of the children I’m teaching. It’s this sharing of knowledge, and the recognition in someone else’s eyes that something you just said clicked for them, that makes our days worthwhile.