When One Door Closes, Another Opens [Paperback]

Betty Fox (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 2003

Widowed in 1964 at the age of 33 and downsized at 67, Betty Fox had every right to simply give up. Undaunted by a desperate situation she persevered against incredible odds, creating the leading Senior Portal on the internet, GrandmaBetty.com. She has been profiled in People Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The CBS Morning Show...

Told in her own down-to-earth words, "When One Door Closes, Another Opens" is an entertaining story which will help you attain a more fulfilling life both in cyber space and the physical world. This book will make you laugh, cry and learn a lot!

Autobiographical and educational, Fox includes chapters on:

The inspirational story of Grandma Betty Fox

A guide to buying a computer

How to protect your computer against Computer Viruses

How to search the internet like an expert

How to avoid Spam and Internet Fraud

How to communicate with Instant Messaging and Email

721 of Grandma Betty's favorite Internet sites for seniors in the categories of Health, Government, Entertainment, Travel...

A glossary of must-know Internet and Computer Terms for seniors that will make you look like a genius

The hilarious and health conscious Grandma Betty Computer Game

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

I am a real life Grandmother and my name really is Betty - thus - GrandmaBetty.com. In February of 1998 the company I was working for moved. I was not able to make the daily commute to the new location so I effectively was forced into retirement at the young age of 68. Being a relatively youthful person who still wanted to contribute to society I sought out a way to add value to peoples lives.

Around this time my son who is a computer professional made me aware of the Internet. He told me I did not have to become a computer genius in order to have the Net change my life. I did not know Internet from Shminternet but I have always loved to communicate with people, research things and to read. I soon realized that this is what the Internet is all about and that it is fast becoming the most important communications tool ever invented.

My son gave me one of his old computers and put something called a browser on it. It was pretty slow and when he saw how much time I was spending online and how much more I wanted to do with the Internet he got me WebTV which he connected to my television set. In minutes I was online and a whole new world opened up to me.

The next big problem was finding things on the Internet. I tried the various popular search engines aimed at the general public. Oy, what a mess. On my first search attempt I was looking for a new recipe for peach pie. I went to one of the popular search engines and typed in the word 'peaches'. In a few seconds the search engine told me it found 85,870 pages with the word 'peaches' in them. I felt like I had just won Bingo. So I started looking at the list of sites the search engine found. I nearly fell off the couch with disbelief...

Thousands of pornographic sites with girls referring to themselves 'peaches', thousands of sites with nothing to do with peaches at all, peach wholesalers in South America...on and on. I could have spent 6 months going through that list without finding a peach recipe.

Next I tried a search for Seniors. I wanted to find sites for active seniors. Again, the result listed thousands of sites (805,750 to be exact). I took out my calculator and with my son's help figured out that if I spent 1 minute on each site it would take me 559 and a half days to visit each site and that's 24 hours a day and every day of the year and a half. I do not think that is a good investment of time. Many of the sites were by seniors in High School and seniors in College. Pornography sites galore, outdated information from 5 years ago, broken link after broken link to sites which no longer exist. And these results are on search sites being valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. There had to be a better way.

Product Details

• Paperback: 161 pages
• Publisher: FCS, Inc. (June 25, 2003)
• ISBN-10: 159196279X
• ISBN-13: 978-1591962793
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,379,390 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book!, July 7, 2003

By 

Steve Weiss (Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When One Door Closes, Another Opens (Paperback)

I thoroughly enjoyed When One Door Closes, Another Opens. I initially bought the book as a fun read on my vacation. What I found was an inspirational story of this amazing lady who started with nothing at the age of 68 after she was laid off from her job and like a geriatric Jerry Yang (Yahoo) built one of the most popular Senior Web Sites. I remembered seeing her in People Magazine.

She has an easy going writing style but conveys a ton of information. The first half of the book tells step-by-step how she built her GrandmaBetty.com web site which
was ultimately bought out by a bigger company from nothing. She didn't even spend any money on her marketing campaign. The second half of the book instructs on important subjects such as finding anything on the Internet, Avoiding Spam and Viruses, Instant Messaging and Buying a Computer Without Getting ... by a Commission Hungry Salesperson. All of this info seems so funny coming from this lady but it is so useful. I am giving it as a gift to my parents.

Beside anyone wanting to learn more about the Internet and wanting to read an incredibly instirational success story I recommend the book (as a web professional I can't believe I am saying this) to marketing professionals or anyone wanting to use guerilla marketing principles to their fullest. I learned a lot. Like she says in the book - if she can do it anyone can.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the best book ever!, July 4, 2003

By 

Jason Scharf (NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When One Door Closes, Another Opens (Paperback)

If you are a computer fan or just need a book to read this is the one for you.

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended Book, July 13, 2003

By 

Seth Berger (Syosset, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When One Door Closes, Another Opens (Paperback)

I read this book, and it was very worthwhile. I learned valuable information about how to enrich my computer usage. GrandmaBetty's story inspired me to do better things in life. This book was a great read.