Going with the FLOH

So the wedding Web site is up and running, and with a few clicks guests can RSVP, book a room at the hotel and even purchase something off one of the registries. It sounds simple enough – except some of your older relatives may be a little nonplussed by it all.

If technology is completely foreign to them, you might try to sing the laurels of technology and help guide them a bit. It just may stick.

“When you’re younger and have young kids, they’re trying to keep up with you; when you’re older, you’re trying to keep up with them,” says actress Florence Henderson. Most famous for playing mom Carol Brady on the “Brady Brunch,” Henderson turned her own technology fears into a way to help older adults in the same boat.

Her new venture, The FLOH Club, is a phone-based technical support service designed to help older adults with tech issues – it’s like roadside assistance for computers, says Henderson.

A reformed Luddite, if you will, Henderson long avoided computers and learning about technology, to the point that she’d have her assistant print out e-mails and would dictate back the responses. “I never really had the time or felt I had the need,” she says. “I was so terrified to even try it.”

But at the behest of her children – “Mom, you gotta do this,” they told her – she dove in and was soon e- mailing from her phone and texting – and thinking it wasn’t hard as she thought it’d be. Now, she has a Facebook page and Skypes with her family. “The most exciting thing for me is being able to video-conference,” she says.

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