About GrandmaCane
GrandmaCane is a private social network created for one simple purpose: to give our family a place of its own on the internet.
It is also, somewhat less importantly, a monument to Dan.
The GrandmaCane Story
For years, families have been forced to communicate using an increasingly chaotic collection of group texts, social media platforms, email chains, shared photo albums, and conversations in which somebody inevitably asks, "Didn't I send that to you?"
Dan looked upon this situation and decided that civilization could do better.
So he built GrandmaCane.
Technically, GrandmaCane is based on open-source social networking software. But describing it that way is a little like saying the Sistine Chapel is based on a ceiling.
Dan has spent countless hours modifying, redesigning, troubleshooting, improving, breaking, repairing, re-breaking, and occasionally staring suspiciously at the underlying software until it agreed to behave properly.
The result is the website you see before you.
About the Founder
Dan was born with many gifts.
Among them are intelligence, creativity, humility, and the extraordinary ability to write an entire About page concerning his own greatness while maintaining a completely straight face.
He is a graduate of USC and holds an MBA from UC Irvine, where his classmates recognized his intellectual gifts by voting him "Most Innovative Thinker."
This is a real thing that happened and therefore legally belongs in this section.
Dan has spent much of his professional career working with websites, digital media, user experience, communications, and technology. These skills eventually converged upon their highest possible purpose:
building a website where his mother can post things.
A Technological Visionary
GrandmaCane began with a relatively simple piece of open-source software.
Dan immediately started changing it.
He changed the appearance.
He changed the navigation.
He changed the profiles.
He changed the search system.
He changed the messaging interface.
He added video posting because the free version didn't have it.
He removed things nobody wanted.
He added things nobody had requested yet.
At one point, he spent an unreasonable amount of time eliminating a mysterious bell from the messaging interface because nobody knew what it did and Dan did not trust it.
The bell is gone now.
You're welcome.
The Team
Although Dan receives the overwhelming majority of the credit—as stipulated by Dan—the development of GrandmaCane has been assisted by artificial intelligence.
This arrangement works well.
Dan provides the vision, judgment, family knowledge, testing, server access, and occasional profanity.
The AI provides code and repeatedly reminds Dan to make backups.
Together, they have produced a surprisingly functional website.
Quality Assurance
GrandmaCane maintains a rigorous testing program known as the Household Beta Test.
This sophisticated quality-assurance methodology consists primarily of allowing people who live with Dan to use the website and waiting to see what confuses them.
This has proven remarkably effective.
Dan's mother, in particular, has emerged as an important usability consultant. Her observations have already resulted in interface improvements and have demonstrated an important principle of software development:
If your mother thinks clicking something makes the website look like it is spying on her computer, redesign it.
Our Mission
Despite all the jokes—and there are likely to be many more—GrandmaCane exists for a reason Dan actually cares about.
Families accumulate stories.
They accumulate photographs, videos, recipes, documents, memories, jokes, arguments, announcements, and thousands of tiny pieces of everyday life.
Most of them eventually disappear.
GrandmaCane is an attempt to create a small corner of the internet that belongs to our family—a place where we can talk to one another today and, hopefully, preserve some of those pieces for tomorrow.
No advertising.
No algorithms trying to make you angry.
No influencers.
No strangers.
Just family.
And Dan.
Mostly Dan.
A Final Word From Management
If GrandmaCane works beautifully, Dan built it.
If something doesn't work, it is almost certainly a complicated technical issue involving open-source software, web hosting, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, a third-party dependency, solar radiation, or circumstances beyond Dan's control.
Please report the problem to Dan anyway.
He'll fix it.
Eventually.
Probably.
GrandmaCane
Connecting generations. Preserving memories. Celebrating Dan.